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 he also studied with Giuseppe Maria Crespi during 1703-1705 while in Bologna, although there is no record by Crespi of this tutelage. Piazzetta was to find a congenial model in Crespi's art, which softened the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio into an idiom of graceful charm. 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 he made a reputation as a leading artist despite his limited output—he was a slow worker—and his modest nature.
Unlike his contemporaries Sebastiano Ricci and Giovanni Battista Tiepolo, Piazzetta traveled little outside of Venice. Tiepolo, whose supremely facile style differed so greatly from Piazzetta's, worked with him on a decorative project and was greatly influenced by the older artist; in turn, the luminosity and brilliance of Tiepolo's palette would influence Piazzetta in his later years. Wittkower contrasts Ricci's superficiality and luminosity with Piazzetta's darker meticulousness, as two contrasting styles of Venetian late-Baroque.
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, Gallerie dell'Accademia, Venice). He brought similar elusiveness to works of a religious nature, such as the Sotto in su Glory of St. Dominic in the Church of San 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 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)
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[edit] References
- Encyclopedia Brittannica (1990)
- Brittanica online
- Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). “19”, Pelican History of ArtArt and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750, 1980, Penguin Books Ltd, 481-82.
