Matteo Pérez

Matteo Pérez de Alesio (1547–1628) was an Italian painter of devotional, historical and maritime subjects during the Mannerist period.

Pérez de Alesio came to Lima from Rome, accompanied by his disciple and helper Pedro Pablo Morón whom he had contracted as an apprentice in 1583.

In 1593, Pérez de Alesio renewed the contract for another 2 and a half years, giving Morón three times the original agreed upon amount.

He brought with him a collection of prints by Dürer and opened a workshop that attracted a number of students and disciples, including Pedro Pablo Morón but also Francisco García (in 1595); the Augustinian friar Francisco Bejarano (in 1599); Domingo Gil from 1600 to 1603; Cosme Ferrero Figueroa and later his son Adriano; forming what Rubén Vargas Ugarte described as one of the first art academies in Lima.

In 1592 he achieved the degree of Gentleman of the Company of Arcabuz Horsemen of the "Guard of this Kingdom of Peru" [1] According to a document dated 1591 from the Peruvian Nacional Archive, recorded by the scribe Córdova [f. 376] he contracted to make several paintings for the general Don Antonio Picado for 300 pesos, among these paintings an image of the Virgin Mary on a copper plate; and a full-length portrait of Picado's wife, Doña Mayor Bravo de Saravia.

Antonio Picado was procurador for the city of Arequipa, where Pérez de Alesio made the main altarpiece of the church of Saint Dominic.

[3] Many biographies describe him as dying in 1616, but a contract of 1628 rejects this theory; in that year he sold an image of the Virgin Mary to the friar Francisco Puche of the order of Saint Benito for the church of Monserrate.