Monsu Desiderio

Explosion in a Cathedral by François de Nomé.

Monsù Desiderio is the name formerly given to an artist believed to have painted architectural scenes in a distinctive style in Naples in the early seventeenth century.^[1] The term Monsù, a corruption of the French monsieur, was often used by Neapolitan historians to denote a painter of foreign origin.^[2]

In the mid-twentieth century, art historians identified the works previously attributed to "Desiderio" as being by at least three different painters: François de Nomé (1593 – after 1620) and Didier Barra, both originally from Metz, and a third artist, whose name is unknown. Nomé's works were described by Rudolf Wittkower as "bizarre and ghostlike paintings of architecture, often crumbling and fantastic".^[1]

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