Giovanni Battista Viola
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Giovanni Battista Viola (1576 - August 10, 1622) was an Italian painter of the early Baroque period in Rome.
Born in Bologna and died in Rome. He was apparently a "student" of Annibale Carracci, and worked with Domenichino in the Villa Aldobrandini in Frascati (1616-18). He appears to have worked for the Giustiniani in Bassano di Sutra. In 1612, he was sharing a house with Francesco Albani. Viola married Silvia Gemelli in 1612, who was already mother to an Anna Gemelli, who in turn married Albani. Hence, Albani was Viola's step-son-in-law. Giulio Mancini commented in his writings that Viola was welll respected for his landscape canvases, which were annotated as present in the collections of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, Giustiniani, Cardinal Mazarin, and the Pamphilj. Louis XIV of France collected at least landscapes, now in the Louvre. He was a teacher of Pietro Paolo Bonzi, and would have been influential for Claude Lorraine
[edit] References
- Getty Museum of Art biography
- A Forgotten Landscape Painter: Giovanni Battista Viola, by Richard E. Spear
The Burlington Magazine (1980) p298+300-315.
