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Carlo Maria Mariani (25 July 1931 – 20 November 2021) was an Italian painter. His paintings are rooted both in neoclassicist theory and modernism. In the 1970s he defended his choice of medium from attacks by art critics by making parallels between the melancholy for the past of neoclassicism and the then trendy conceptual art. He received international attention in the 1980s with what was called pittura colta (“cultivated painting“) and la Nuova Maniera (“The New Style“) in Italy, in which he employed old subjects and styles. Among other things he depicted Andy Warhol as Napoleon and made “improved“ and “corrected“ versions of works by Leonardo da Vinci and Raphael. In the United States his works were called postmodernism; the American art critic Hal Foster made a distinction between postmodernisms rooted in “reaction“ and “resistance“, and placed Mariani with his shameless use of “worn-out&q
