EXTRACTS: illustrators issue 3 © 2013 The Book Palace (96 PAGES in Full edition)

11 historical illustrator of his day, or come to that, any day, is as remarkable as the work that he created. When Fortunino Matania was born in Naples in 1881, his career as a painter was to a certain extent already pre- destined. His father Eduardo was a painter and illustrator, and progenitor of a family of artists whose lineage was to include many other illustrators in Fortunino’s immediate and extended family. With improvements in printing technology, and a concomitant flowering of outlets for illustration, artists such as Eduardo, found their work in constant demand, and it was scarcely surprising therefore that he should regard his studio as a family business, and his son Fortunino as an apprentice in waiting. It was Eduardo who was to provide the boy with the most comprehensive and structured training that any art student could wish for. Eduardo’s simple and over- riding precept was that a real artist should have the ability to master all the disciplines of pictorial expression, and as such he encouraged the boy not merely to confine his studies to drawing and painting, but to master the ability to model, carve and work in metal and wood. In short to become a well rounded craftsman. His exposure to art and the world of artists was so all consuming that Eduardo, a regular patron of ‘The Artist’s Café’ in Naples, would take along the precocious infant to meet other artists. They, in turn, would be charmed and awed as the infant drew on the marble tabletops, whilst waiters took orders, and opinions on life and art were traded. As Fortunino’s education progressed, so his father gradually inducted him into working on commissions. The boy proved a willing and capable assistant to his father, and by the age of nine, his prodigious talents had been ABOVE: Gladiators TOP: Princess Nefertiti FACING PAGE: A scene from the reign of King Stephen. Matania’s scenes from antiquity were reinforced by his insistence that every work he applied his talents to should be underpinned by meticulous research, as these scenes attest. Text continued from page 5 Courtesy of Look and Learn