CORCOS, VITTORIO

CORCOS, VITTORIO (1859–1933). Italian portrait painter. Born in Livorno, Corcos studied with the Leghorn painter Giuseppe Baldini and from 1875 at the Art Academy in Florence. In 1877 he won a silver medal for his painting Figura, copia dal vero. The following year he won a scholarship for young painters. In 1880 his painting Arabo in preghiera, was bought by no less a personage than the King of Italy, Umberto I. In that same year Corcos left Italy for Paris, where he lived intermittently until 1886. He worked mostly for the art dealer Goupil. He presented paintings at the Salon, such as A la bras-serie in 1881, l'anniversaire in 1882, and in 1885 a portrait. In 1886 he was back in Florence, where he took part in the First National Art Exhibition. He married, outside his faith, the widow Emma Rotigliano, née Ciabatti. His best-known portraits are those of the composer Pietro Mascagni (1891), the Italian poet Giosue' Carducci (1892), the German Kaiser Wilhelm II and his wife Augusta Victoria (1904), and Margherita of Savoy, Queen of Italy (1922). His last years were saddened by the death of his only son, Massimiliano, in 1916 at the front during World War I. Corcos is also remembered for his portrait paintings of beautiful women. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: I. Taddei (ed.), Vittorio Corcos, Il fantasma e il fiore (1997).