Luigi or Louis Rubio (Rome, 6 February 1801[1] – Florence, 2 August 1882)[2] was an Italian painter, active in both Neoclassicism but later Romantic styles, painting mainly historic-mythologic canvases, as well as some genre subjects, and portraits.
[3] In 1824 at Rome, his canvas of The Samaritan won the Pio Clementine Prize, two gold medals, and granted him a pension of 15 scudi monthly for three years, paid by the papal government under Pope Leo XII.
[5] His major painting Paolo and Francesca was a highly finished and detailed canvas exhibited at the Paris Salon of 1833, whose colours harked back to those of the turn of the 19th century.
[6] At the 1836 Exposition there, he displayed a canvas depicting Marriage of Salvator Rosa on his Deathbed; and he won a gold medal a number of commissions for the Museum of Versailles, which was being opened by King Louis Philippe I.
While in Paris, Rubio met Harriet de Boinville, a well-connected widow who frequently hosted social gatherings for Italian revolutionaries and intellectuals.
[10] Among his later works are: Donna che attinge acqua al fonte (1844); The painter Rubens persuades young Van Dyck to leave the Flemish village of Saventhem, where he had stayed for the love of a young woman (1851); Costumes from the surroundings of Rome(1861); Una filatrice (1861); Shepherds of the Roman Campagna (1861); Contadina che fila (1861); The Charity (1863); Neapolitan Fishermen (1863); Episode from the 1174 Siege of Ancona (1866); and a Portrait of Marcello (1870), the famous classical music composer.