Vincenzo La Bella

Vincenzo La Bella (October 24, 1872 – December 26, 1954) was an Italian painter. He worked on costume painting, portraiture, interior decoration, illustration, lithography, poster design, and art criticism. Biography Vincenzo La Bella was born in Naples in 1872. He attended the Institute of Fine Arts in Naples, where he studied under the guidance of Gioacchino Toma and Domenico Morelli. He was fascinated and carefully studied the paintings, exhibited in the National Museum's picture gallery, of the Neapolitan and Bolognese schools. In 1890, he held his first official exhibition, and in 1892, he started his career as an illustrator in Paris, collaborating with the magazine Le Monde illustré. Until 1897, he created drawings representing the everyday life and customs of the society of that time. In France, he garnered acclaim, becoming close friends with Camille Flammarion, for whom he created a portrait. He also completed around sixty black and white compositions, commissioned to illustrate the Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe. He returned to Naples in 1897, where he continued his work as an illustrator for various books and publications. In 1900, he collaborated for a few months with the newly established periodical Italia ride. In the same year, he participated in an illustration contest organized by Vittorio Alinari for a new edition of the Divine Comedy, presented at the I International Exhibition of Modern Decorative Art in Turin.