Antonio Balestra

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Antonio Balestra was an Italian Rococo painter. Born in 1666 and died in 1740. Initially trained in Venice under Antonio Bellucci, then spent time in Carlo Maratta's workshop in Rome. He painted mainly in Verona and Venice. His pupils in Verona were Pietro Rotari and Giambettino Cignaroli (1706-1770). Pietro Longhi briefly worked under Balestra. In Venice, other pupils included Giuseppi Nogari, Mattia Bortoloni (1695-1750) and Angelo Trevisani. Also had links to a young Giambattista Pittoni ^[1].

In painting, Balestra was somewhat the staid reactionary. Wittkower ^[2] quotes the distaste of Balestra in 1733 for the tendency of then modern painters to deviate from enshrined standards of academic painting:

• "All the present evil derives from the pernicious habit, generally accepted, of working from the imagination without having first learned how to draw after good models and compose in accordance with good maxims. No longer does one see young artists studying the antique; on the contrary, we have come to a point where such study is derided as useless and obnoxious."

[edit] Anthology

• Death of Abel

[edit] Source

• Wittkower, Rudolf (1980). Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750. Pelican History of Art (Penguin Books Ltd), pp 461, 483-484.

[edit] References

1. ^ (Wittkower, R., Chapter 19, p 483-4)
2. ^ (Ibid, Chapter 19, p 461)