Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (29 April 1675-?2 November 1741) was a widely-travelled Rococo

Rococo

Rococo , also referred to as "Late Baroque", is an 18th-century style which developed as Baroque artists gave up their symmetry and became increasingly ornate, florid, and playful...

decorative painter

Painting

Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...

from Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

, where he was born and died. He is considered to be one of the most important Venetian painters of the early 18th century, melding the Renaissance

Renaissance

The Renaissance was a cultural movement that spanned roughly the 14th to the 17th century, beginning in Italy in the Late Middle Ages and later spreading to the rest of Europe. The term is also used more loosely to refer to the historical era, but since the changes of the Renaissance were not...

style of Paolo Veronese

Paolo Veronese

Paolo Veronese was an Italian painter of the Renaissance in Venice, famous for paintings such as The Wedding at Cana and The Feast in the House of Levi...

with the Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

of Pietro da Cortona

Pietro da Cortona

Pietro da Cortona, by the name of Pietro Berrettini, born Pietro Berrettini da Cortona, was the leading Italian Baroque painter of his time and also one of the key architects in the emergence of Roman Baroque architecture. He was also an important decorator...

and Luca Giordano

Luca Giordano

Luca Giordano was an Italian late Baroque painter and printmaker in etching. Fluent and decorative, he worked successfully in Naples and Rome, Florence and Venice, before spending a decade in Spain....

, and is considered an important predecessor of Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo

Giovanni Battista Tiepolo , also known as Gianbattista or Giambattista Tiepolo, was an Italian painter and printmaker from the Republic of Venice...

. One of his pupils was Antonio Visentini

Antonio Visentini

thumb|220px|View of Piazza San Marco in Venice, by Antonio Visentini .Antonio Visentini was an Italian architectural designer, painter and engraver, known for his architectural fantasies and capricci, the author of treatises on perspective and professor at the Venetian Academy...

.

Pellegrini's father, also Antonio, was a shoemaker from Padua

Padua

Padua is a city and comune in the Veneto, northern Italy. It is the capital of the province of Padua and the economic and communications hub of the area. Padua's population is 212,500 . The city is sometimes included, with Venice and Treviso, in the Padua-Treviso-Venice Metropolitan Area, having...

. Pellegrini first studied under Girolamo Genga

Girolamo Genga

Girolamo Genga was an Italian painter and architect of the late Renaissance, Mannerist style.- Biography :Genga was born in 1507 in a region near Urbino. According mainly to Giorgio Vasari's biography, by age thirteen Genga had gained an apprenticeship in Orvieto under Luca Signorelli...

, but was later a pupil of Paolo Pagani

Paolo Pagani

Paolo Pagani also known as Paolo Antonio Pagani or Paolo Pagano, was an Italian Baroque/Mannerism painter of the 17th century born in Valsolda, now a municipality in the Province of Como in the Italian region Lombardy, located about north of Milan and about north of Como, on the border with...

and of Sebastiano Ricci

Sebastiano Ricci

Sebastiano Ricci was an Italian painter of the late Baroque school of Venice. About the same age as Piazzetta, and an elder contemporary of Tiepolo, he represents a late version of the vigorous and luminous Cortonesque style of grand manner fresco painting.-Early years:He was born in Belluno, son...

. He married Angela Carriera, the sister of Rosalba Carriera

Rosalba Carriera

Rosalba Carriera was a Venetian Rococo painter. In her younger years, she specialized in portrait miniatures...

, in c.1704. Pellegrini decorated the dome above the staircase at the Scuola Grande di San Rocco

Chiesa di San Rocco di Venezia

The Church of Saint Roch is a Roman Catholic church dedicated to Saint Roch in Venice, northern Italy. It was built between 1489 and 1508 by Bartolomeo Bon the Younger, but was substantially altered in 1725. The façade dates from 1765 to 1771. The church is one of the Plague-churches built in...

in 1709.

He is mainly known for his work in England

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

, which he visited from 1708 to 1713 at the invitation of the Earl of Manchester

Charles Montagu, 1st Duke of Manchester

Charles Edward Montagu, 1st Duke of Manchester, 4th Earl of Manchester , son of Robert Montagu, 3rd Earl of Manchester, was educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, and succeeded to his father's earldom in 1683...

, and where he had considerable success. He painted murals in a number of English country houses, including Castle Howard

Castle Howard

Castle Howard is a stately home in North Yorkshire, England, north of York. One of the grandest private residences in Britain, most of it was built between 1699 and 1712 for the 3rd Earl of Carlisle, to a design by Sir John Vanbrugh...

(mostly destroyed in 1940) and Kimbolton Castle

Kimbolton Castle

Kimbolton Castle in Kimbolton, Cambridgeshire, is best known as the final home of King Henry VIII's first queen, Catherine of Aragon. Originally a medieval castle but converted into a stately palace, it was the family seat of the Dukes of Manchester from 1615 until 1950...

, Narford Hall, and in London, 31 St James's Square

Norfolk House

Norfolk House, at 31 St James's Square, London, was built in 1722 for the Duke of Norfolk. It was a royal residence for a short time only, when Frederick, Prince of Wales, father of King George III, lived there 1737-1741, after his marriage in 1736 to Princess Augusta of Saxe-Gotha, daughter of...

for the Duke of Portland, where George Vertue

George Vertue

George Vertue was an English engraver and antiquary, whose notebooks on British art of the first half of the 18th century are a valuable source for the period.-Life:...

noted in his notebooks "the hall and Staircase and one or two of the great rooms". He became a director of Sir Godfrey Kneller's Academy in London in 1711. He submitted designs for the decorating the interior dome of the new St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul's Cathedral

St Paul's Cathedral, London, is a Church of England cathedral and seat of the Bishop of London. Its dedication to Paul the Apostle dates back to the original church on this site, founded in AD 604. St Paul's sits at the top of Ludgate Hill, the highest point in the City of London, and is the mother...

, and is said to have been Christopher Wren

Christopher Wren

Sir Christopher Wren FRS is one of the most highly acclaimed English architects in history.He used to be accorded responsibility for rebuilding 51 churches in the City of London after the Great Fire in 1666, including his masterpiece, St. Paul's Cathedral, on Ludgate Hill, completed in 1710...

's favourite painter, but did not win the commission, losing out to Sir James Thornhill.

Pellegrini travelled to Germany and the Netherlands in 1713, collecting Northern paintings as he went and completing works in many numerous European cities, including the ceiling of John Law

John Law (economist)

John Law was a Scottish economist who believed that money was only a means of exchange that did not constitute wealth in itself and that national wealth depended on trade...

's Bank of France in Paris

Paris

Paris is the capital and largest city in France, situated on the river Seine, in northern France, at the heart of the Île-de-France region...

(destroyed), the Golden Room in the Mauritshuis

Mauritshuis

The Royal Picture Gallery Mauritshuis is an art museum in The Hague, the Netherlands. Previously the residence of count John Maurice of Nassau, it now has a large art collection, including paintings by Dutch painters such as Johannes Vermeer, Rembrandt van Rijn, Jan Steen, Paulus Potter and Frans...

in The Hague

The Hague

The Hague is the capital city of the province of South Holland in the Netherlands. With a population of 500,000 inhabitants , it is the third largest city of the Netherlands, after Amsterdam and Rotterdam...

, and others in Prague

Prague

Prague is the capital and largest city of the Czech Republic. Situated in the north-west of the country on the Vltava river, the city is home to about 1.3 million people, while its metropolitan area is estimated to have a population of over 2.3 million...

, Dresden

Dresden

Dresden is the capital city of the Free State of Saxony in Germany. It is situated in a valley on the River Elbe, near the Czech border. The Dresden conurbation is part of the Saxon Triangle metropolitan area....

and Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

. He returned to England in 1719, but was less successful on his second visit, mainly due to competition from other Venetian painters, including his mentor Sebastiano Ricci

Sebastiano Ricci

Further reading