Paolo Forcella: A Neapolitan Painter from Cairo to Venice

Evening on a quiet rio: a Baroque church façade catches the last warm light, a red-tiled loggia overhangs the water, boats and mooring posts throw long reflections across the dark canal. Paolo Forcella (born Naples 1868) painted Venice as a Neapolitan, with solid architecture and living water, and this small board is lot 10 of our Modern Masters: 20th Century Art sale.

The Neapolitan school

Forcella was born in Naples in 1868 and trained there at a time when Morelli, Dalbono and the painters of Posillipo had made the city one of the liveliest centres of Italian painting. His elder brother Nicola Forcella was one of the most admired Orientalists of the period, and Paolo travelled with him to Egypt; Cairo street scenes, mosques and minarets, often finely worked on paper, became an important part of his output.

Venice in the vedutista tradition

Back in Italy he turned to the subjects of the Neapolitan vedutisti, the bay, the coast and above all Venice, whose canals and church façades he rendered in a fluid, atmospheric manner. Where the Orientalist sheets are detailed, the Venetian boards are painterly: evening light on a façade, a few boats, the water alive. The date of his death is not recorded.

Forcella for collectors

His paintings appear at auction in Italy, France and the United States, the Egyptian subjects drawing the Orientalist market and the Venetian views a broader one. An unrestored panel with the paint layer intact, as here, is the condition to look for in a painter whose small boards have often been over-cleaned. More on his artist page.

At Aurora & Athena

Venetian Canal with Boats and a Church Façade, c. 1920s, oil on board, 32.5 × 40.5 cm, framed, signed at the lower right, is offered on 17 October 2026 with an estimate of 800 – 1 000 €. Photographs, condition summary and bidding on the lot page.