Orsola Faccioli

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Orsola Faccioli (also known as Licata Faccioli) was an Italian painter who mainly painted city views and interior scenes. She was born in Vicenza on August 16, 1823, the youngest of seven siblings, only three of whom survived to adulthood. Her family sent her to study at the Venice Academy, where she won silver medals in several contests.

In 1848 she married professor Antonio Licata and moved to Naples, traveling and exhibiting across Italy with him until his death in 1892. She became an instructor of design in 1867 at a Neapolitan school for girls and was elected Academic Associate of the Academy of Fine Arts of Perugia and of Venice in 1864. Her works include Victor Emmanuel II addressing the people of Vicenza from the Palazzo Chiericati (1869), L’Isola di San Giorgio in Venice, Piazza Navona in Rome, and various interiors and church scenes in Naples. She exhibited in Hamburg and Venice, and her painting Il fiume Bacchiglione won a first-class silver medal at the Venice exhibition. Other works include Festa del 6 ottobre (1875), Una veduta della facciata di San Giorgio al Velabro (1851), and Arum Italicum (1881). Her son Giovanni Battista Licata was a scientist and explorer who died in Ethiopia in 1886. Orsola stopped painting after her husband’s death in 1892 and is buried beside him in Poggioreale cemetery, Naples.