Corrado Giaquinto (1703 - 1766),

• Was an Italian Rococo painter.
• He was born in Molfetta.
• As a boy he apprenticed with a local painter Saverio Porta, escaping the religious career his parents had intended for him.
• By October 1724, he left Molfetta, and along with his contemporaries Francesco de Mura and Giuseppe Bonito, he trained from 1719 to 1723 in the prolific Neapolitan studio of Francesco Solimena.
• In 1723, he moved to Rome to work in the studio of Sebastiano Conca.
• In March 1727, with Giuseppe Rossi as an assistant, Giaquinto opened an independentstudio near the Ponte Sisto, in the parish of Saint Giovanni of the Malva in Rome.
• In 1734, he married Caterina Silvestri Agate.
• The first documented work by his hand is Christ crucified with the Madonna, Saint John Evangelist, and Magdalene commissioned in 1730 by king John V of Portugal for the cathedral of the Mafra.
• In 1731, he received a prestigious commission, to execute frescoes in the church of San Nicola dei Lorenesi: Saint Nicholas water gush from cliff, three theologic and cardinal Virtues, and in the cupola Paradise.
• He died in Naples in 1766.
• Among his pupils in Molfetta was Niccoló Porta.