Giovanni Battista Piazzetta
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Giovanni Battista Piazzetta (Giambattista Piazzetta or Giambattista Valentino Piazzetta) (February 13, 1682 or 1683 – April 28, 1754) was a Italian rococo painter of religious subjects and genre scenes.
[edit] Biography
Piazzetta was born in Venice, the son of a sculptor, from whom he had early training in wood carving. Starting in 1697 he studied with the painter Antonio Molinari. By Piazzetta's account, while living in Bologna in 1703-05, he studied under Giuseppe Maria Crespi, although there is no record by Crespi of formal tutelage. Piazzetta did find some inspiration from Crespi's art, and did soften and add gracefulness to the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio. He also represented peasantry, even if often in a grand fashion. He was also greatly impressed by the altarpieces created by another Bolognese painter of a half-century earlier, Guercino.
Upon his return to Venice around 1710, though not prolific or immodest, he gained a reputation as a leading artist. He ultimately became less patronized than two other eminent stars in Venetian late-baroque/Rococco, Ricci and Tiepolo. These two painters had a luminous palette and facile ease that allowed them to carpet meters of ceiling with frescoes, although with a superficiality and charm that is absent from Piazzetta's darker and more intimate depictions. It is not to say that Tiepolo, who collaborated with Piazzeta on some projects, did not influence his elder contemporary (or vice-versa); however, the salons of grand manner frescoes were populated, both in Venice and specially abroad (Piazetta traveled little), by Tiepolo and Ricci.
Piazzetta created an art of warm, rich color and a mysterious poetry. He was highly original in the intensity of color he sometimes used in his shadows, and in the otherworldly quality he gave to the light which throws part of a composition into relief. The gestures and glances of his protagonists hint at unseen dramas, as in one of his best-known paintings, The Soothsayer(1740)[1]. He brought similar elusiveness to works of a religious nature, such as the Sotto in su Glory of St. Dominic in the Church of Santi Giovanni e Paolo.
Also notable are his many carefully rendered drawings of half-length figures or groups of heads. Usually in charcoal or black chalk with white heightening on gray paper, these are filled with the same spirit that animates his paintings, and were purchased by collectors as independent works. He also produced engravings.
In 1750 Piazzetta became the first director of the newly founded Scuola di Nudo, and he devoted himself in the last few years of his life to teaching. He was elected a member of the Bolognese Accademia Clementina in 1727. Among the painters in his studio were Domenico Maggiotto, Francesco Cappella, Egidio Dall'Oglio, and Antonio Marinetti[2]. Among younger painters who emulated his style are Giulia Lama, Federico Bencovich, and Francesco Polazzo (1683-1753). He died in Venice in 1754.
[edit] Selected works
- St.James Led to Matyrdom (1717) Santa Stae, Venice.
- Madonna and child appearing to St Philip Neri 1725-7, originally Santa Maria della Fava, Venice, and now NGA, Washington DC.[1]
- Glory of St.Dominic (1725-1727) San Giovanni e Paolo, Venice.
- Ecstasy of St.Francis (1732)
- Assumption (1735)
- St. Margaret of Cortona (1737) National Gallery Art, Washington DC [2]
- Sacrifice of Isaac, (after 1735, unfinished) [3]
- Fortune Teller(1740)
- The Pastoral (1739-41)
- Idyll by the Seashore (1739-41)
[edit] References
- Encyclopedia Britannica (1990)
- Britannica online
- Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). "19", in Pelican History of Art: Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750, 1980, Penguin Books Ltd, 481-82.
- John T Spike (1986). in Centro Di, Kimball Museum of Art, Fort Worth, Texas, USA: Giuseppe Maria Crespi and the Emergence of Genre Painting in Italy, p 181.
