The small coastal town of Barletta is paying homage to its most famous son, Giuseppe De Nittis, with a new museum devoted to the work of the Italian Impressionist who died at a tragically young age.
The De Nittis Gallery features a valuable collection of work by the artist, who was killed by a stroke at the age of 38, including 146 paintings and 65 drawings.
De Nittis's wife, the French-born Leontine Gruvelle, donated the collection to Barletta in her will in 1914, 30 years after her husband died.
"I am entrusting the artistic estate of my husband to the honour and patriotism of the Barletta people, so they will preserve the name of their fellow Barlettan," wrote Gruvelle, who was the inspiration for many of De Nittis's paintings.
The collection of his work now has a permanent home in the freshly restored second floor of the baroque Palazzo Della Marra.
Recent studies suggest construction started on the building in the second half of the 1500s, and it passed through a series of noble families before becoming state property in 1958.
Piecemeal renovations got under way 13 years later and the lengthy restoration job has now drawn to a final close.
De Nittis (1846-1884) was one of the few Italian Impressionist painters to make an international name for himself.
He moved to Naples at an early age to study art but frustrated by the limitations on his work, he soon quit.
Not long after, he travelled to Paris, where he met and married Gruvelle and began exhibiting alongside the likes of Edgar Degas, Paul Gauguin and Camille Pissarro.
Technically brilliant and devoted to his work, De Nittis absorbed the dominant styles of the period and swiftly excelled in them.
The art critic Vittorio Pica famously remarked of the multifaceted Italian that he was "a southerner in the South, French in Paris, a Londoner in London."
De Nittis is in the collections of many top museums including the Louvre, the San Francisco Art Museum and the Boston Museum of Fine Arts.
The opening of the new gallery has been timed to coincide with a temporary exhibit in the same museum devoted to the work of De Nittis and two of his Impressionist contemporaries, another Italian, Federico Zandomeneghi, and Auguste Renoir.
The exhibit draws together a variety of work by the three artists from international collections, looking at their similarities and differences within the context of Impressionism.
'Zandomeneghi, De Nittis, Renoir. I Pittori della Felicita' ('Zandomeneghi, De Nittis, Renoir. The Painters of Happiness) runs in the Palazzo della Marra until July 15.
