Vittorio Maria (Born 1692) was an Italian stuccoist and painter of the late-Baroque. He painted frescoes in Bologna in the Basilica of San Domenico, and the gallery of the Ranuzzi Palace, as well as the cupola of the church of the Madonna della Guardia. Maria also painted for the Madonna del Soccorso. Salomone incensa gli idoli and Convito di Baldassarre are some of his painting found in the Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna. Maria was largely self-taught but he was gifted with exceptional talent. He became a pupil of Antonio Dardani in his native Bologna where he was active. He developed his talents as a figure painter and became a stylist of unparalleled elegance. He had such qualities that are praiseworthy, but these qualities were definitely not as a result of his long toil but they were pure gifts with which he was endowed.
Maria actually began his career as a stuccoist. But as years went by, he got impressed by the art of the quadraturista Chiarini Marcantonio that he admired and decided to become a painter. Maria himself began to specialize in the study of perspective to follow in the footsteps of Marcantonio who produced large perspective paintings that he saw while he was working at the Palazzo Almandini. Such an attitude enabled Maria to secure a position among the Bologna’s most highly reputed artists in of his time. In fact, due to his hard work and ability to learn fast, he was chosen 4 times to be the director of the Accademia Clementina of Bologna.
