page_title: Michele Catti
section_title: Biography
hierarchical_section_title: Michele Catti / Biography
caption_attribution_description: Italiano: Olio su tavola, 41 x 24 cm, collezione privata.
context_page_description: Michele Catti was an Italian artist, considered one of the most important Sicilian landscape painters of the Belle Époque.
context_section_description: Catti was born in Palermo on April 5, 1855 to Andrea Catti and Carmela Riotta. He was the second son in a family of 4 brothers and 3 sisters.   
  His father, born to Michele Catti and Concetta Natoli of the princely family originally from Patti, belonged to a prominent family of judges and lawyers in the Bourbon administration. He wanted Catti to also start legal studies in Palermo and was therefore sent to his aunt Sabina Distefano in Palermo, as the family had relocated to nearby Carini. Although his father envisioned that he would follow him in his legal career, Catti was not convinced of this choice and abandoned the studies he was enrolled in. Subsequently his father ceased his financial support and broke all communications with his son. Nonetheless, his aunt continued to host and nourish him. His father's cousin Luigi Natoli, who would become famous himself as a writer under the pseudonym William Galt and as one of Catti's most important endorsers, supported him financially when Catti broke with his father.
  
  Soon however Catti tried, by writing to his father's influential friends, to re-establish contact with him and in the end some friends made him reconcile with his son. Despite the fact that the relationship between the two remained difficult, his father arranged for his son to start working as a clerk at the court of Palermo. This work was a restraint for a bohemian like him. During this time he spent a great deal of time with Luigi Natoli, who encouraged him in his painting and introduced him to the Palermo salons of the wealthy Florio, Lanza and Trabia families and studios of the main artistic personalities of the time. The young Michele Catti, brilliant and extrovert, gained the esteem of the painter Francesco Lojacono, the foremost Sicilian landscape artist in this period, who took him in as a pupil. Catti initially followed the lessons of the Lojacono with great enthusiasm and, distinguished for his talent and disposition, became his student. But tired of focusing on technical painting and the sensitivity of Lojacono, he soon moved on.
  Around 1875, Catti met the artist Vincenzo Ragusa, who had just returned to Palermo with his wife, artist O'Tama, from Japan, where he had opened a painting school that had been very successful. He immediately hit it off with him, and enthusiastic about the many Japanese components he had introduced in his art, they planned to open a school together, but the sad economic situation and the precarious state of his health prevented this. In 1875 Catti decided to participate in the exhibition organized in Montevergini, for the Congress of Scientists held in Palermo. Catti, unknown to anyone, prepared a work especially for the exhibition, Burrasca d’autunno, a canvas of 50 x 80 cm. His painting was considered one of the most beautiful works of the exhibition and one of the men who bestowed him with such compliments was Francesco Lojacono.
  
  At the inauguration all the nobility of Palermo was present, accompanying the honored guests Prince Umberto of Savoy and Margherita along with other personalities. Umberto, after being introduced by Prince Ferdinando Monroy, gave him his hand and said, "You are from Palermo. It is good that you honor your homeland." After a short conversation Umberto bought the painting. He also received a flattering appraisal by the French painter and sculptor Jean-Léon Gérôme, who said during the exhibition that Catti was a revelation.
   In 1881 he participated in the Fine Arts Exhibition of the Milan National Exhibition with the seascape Crepuscolo. Nonetheless, Michele Catti took only one trip outside of Sicily in his whole life. Together with Luigi Natoli, he went to Rome in 1883. In the eternal city painter Francesco Paolo Michetti, admiring his paintings, invited him to work in his studio, but Catti appears to have declined. He went back after several months with the conviction of devoting himself entirely to painting the reality of Sicily.
  Returning to Palermo, he married Maria Anna Contarini, of a marquesal family originally from Venice, on 7 April 1888.
caption: Tempo piovoso. Undated. Oil on wood, 41 x 24 cm, private collection.
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