decorator, known as 'Signor Lorenzini’, was born in Rome. Aged 21, he married eighteen-year-old Maria Boleta and they spent some time in Paris in the late 1870s before moving to London, where he was listed in the London PO Directories as a decorative artist in 1880-83, then he and Maria left for Sydney. He worked as an 'artist decorator’ in Sydney from 1884 and seems to have been an active member of the Sydney Italian community. He apparently belonged to Sydney’s Italian club, Il circolo del buon umore , which gathered each year on 2 June to commemorate the anniversary of Garibaldi’s death, where his good friend Tommaso Sani was a leading light.
Lorenzini died at his Pennant Hills farm, Sydney in 1921. (His house and farm buildings were derelict in 1967 and have now disappeared.)
The Lorenzini archive, acquired by the Historic Houses Trust for its Resource Centre Collection in 1998, includes numerous designs for wall panels, room decoration and paintings. Buildings he decorated in the 1880s include the London Chartered Bank, Sydney (though his designs for it don’t survive). In 1908 he decorated Paddington Town Hall for a grand Italian ball. There is a set of four watercolour designs c.1888 for a public building in the Historic Houses Trust collection, including an allegorical representation of NSW as Commerce, sitting in a dark wood with her treasures while Cupid apparently tries to pull her away (ill. insites , 3).
- Writers:
- Staff Writer
- Date written:
- 1999
- Last updated:
- 2011
