Giovanni Battista Piazzetta. Giovanni Battista Piazzetta was an Italian Rococo painter of religious subjects and genre scenes.
Piazzetta was born in Venice, the son of a sculptor Giacomo Piazzetta, from whom he had early training in wood carving. Starting in 1697 he studied with the painter Antonio Molinari.
By Piazzetta's account, he studied under Giuseppe Maria Crespi while living in Bologna in 1703-05, although there is no record by Crespi of formal tutelage. Thanks to Crespi, Carlo Cignani's influence reached Piazzetta.
Piazzetta did find inspiration in Crespi's art, in which the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio was transformed into an idiom of graceful charm in his pictures of common folk. He was also greatly impressed by the altarpieces created by another Bolognese painter of a half-century earlier, Guercino.
Around 1710, he returned to Venice. There he won recognition as a leading artist despite his limited output and his unassuming nature, but he ultimately was less patronized, both in Venice and especially abroad, than two other eminent stars in Venetian late-Baroque / Rococo, Ricci and Tiepolo. yet Piazzeta's range of topics was broader than that of these artists; Tiepolo, for example, never painted genre paintings and restricted himself to grand history and religious altarpieces. Ricci and Tiepolo had a luminous palette and facile ease that allowed them to carpet meters of ceiling with frescoes, althou
Piazzetta was born in Venice, the son of a sculptor Giacomo Piazzetta, from whom he had early training in wood carving. Starting in 1697 he studied with the painter Antonio Molinari.
By Piazzetta's account, he studied under Giuseppe Maria Crespi while living in Bologna in 1703-05, although there is no record by Crespi of formal tutelage. Thanks to Crespi, Carlo Cignani's influence reached Piazzetta.
Piazzetta did find inspiration in Crespi's art, in which the chiaroscuro of Caravaggio was transformed into an idiom of graceful charm in his pictures of common folk. He was also greatly impressed by the altarpieces created by another Bolognese painter of a half-century earlier, Guercino.
Around 1710, he returned to Venice. There he won recognition as a leading artist despite his limited output and his unassuming nature, but he ultimately was less patronized, both in Venice and especially abroad, than two other eminent stars in Venetian late-Baroque / Rococo, Ricci and Tiepolo. yet Piazzeta's range of topics was broader than that of these artists; Tiepolo, for example, never painted genre paintings and restricted himself to grand history and religious altarpieces. Ricci and Tiepolo had a luminous palette and facile ease that allowed them to carpet meters of ceiling with frescoes, althou
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