Born in Naples, among his better-known works are illustrations of the sinking of the Titanic and of the Lusitania. Most famous of all was a wartime painting entitled ‘Goodbye, Old Man’, depicting a soldier bidding farewell to his dying horse. Matania produced the first picture of the opening of Tutankhamen’s tomb by Howard Carter in 1922. In the following decades he worked mainly on illustrations for women’s magazines. He is also credited with the images on which the sets of Cecil B. de Mille’s The Ten Commandments were based.
