Requeno, Vlncente

, a learned Spanish Jesuit, was born in Grenada about 1730. After a liberal education, in which he made great proficiency in philosophy and mathematics, and discovered much taste for the fine arts, he

| retired to Italy on the expulsion of his order. In 1782 he sent to the society opened in Madrid for the fine arts, a memoir which gained the first prize; and in 1788 he carried off the prize proposed by the academy of Seville. These two memoirs, which were printed in 1789, at Seville, met with the approbation of all the foreign literary journals. He had already obtained considerable fame on the continent from his elaborate work, printed at Seville in 1766, on the “Roman Antiquities in Spain,” and had contributed very much to Masdeu’s critical and literary history of Spain, printed in 1781, &c. But perhaps he is best known to artists and men of taste, by his “Saggi sul ristabilimento clelP antica arte de‘ Greci, e de’ Romani Pittori,” vol. I. Venice, 1784. The second edition of this elegant work was published in 2 vols. 8vo, at Parma, by Mr. Joseph Molini in 1787. The author’s object was, as the title indicates, to investigate and restore the ancient art of Grecian and Roman painting, and therefore in his first volume he gives a circumstantial account of encaustic painting as practised by the ancients, by which the lustre of their works is preserved to this day. He proves that they not only used the encaustic art in painting, but employed it in varnishing their statues, and even their utensils, ships, houses, &c. After descanting on the disadvantages that arise from painting in oil, he discloses the method of preparing the materials employed in encaustic painting, with the manner of using them; and substantiates this system by the opinions of many members of the Clementine academy of Bologne, and of several professors of the academies of Venice, Verona, Padua, &c. also of others who, beside himself, have tried them; particularly at Mantua, where under the patronage of the marquis Bianchi, many pictures were painted, of which Requeno gives an account. Artists, however, have not in general been very forward to adopt this plan, which, as the author explains it, differs very much from what has been proposed by Count de Caylus, Cochin, Bachelier, Muntz, and others. The abbe Requeno died at Venice in 1799. ¹