Leonardo de Mango

Who was Leonardo de Mango?

An Orientalist painter who lived almost half a century in Istanbul up to his death, Leonardo de Mango is described by the art commentator Thalasso as, a painter through whom the East spoke. De Mango was born on 19 February 1843, the eldest child of a large family in the town of Bisceglie near Bari in Italy, where he honed his native talent for drawing up to the age of nineteen.

In 1862, under the patronage of an aristocratic family of Bari, he entered the Academy of Fine Arts of Naples and studied there for eight years under Filippo Palizzi and of Domenico Morelli. Morelli was also a painter who treated exotic orientalist themes. During this period de Mango also worked with Saverio Altamura, Bernardo Celentano, Raffaele d'Auria, Federico Maldarelli, Raffaele Postiglione and Giuseppe Mancinelli.

In 1883 De Mango settled in Istanbul during the reign of Sultan Abdul Hamid II, where he is known to have set up, and taught for some time at, the oil painting department of the School of Fine Arts. Forced to leave Istanbul briefly in 1911 during the Tripolitanian War, the artist returned to the city following the Treaty of Ouchy on 15 October 1912.