Pier Leone Ghezzi was born in Rome in 1674. He was a Rococo painter and caricaturist. He trained under his father, Giuseppe Ghezzi (1634 – 1721), who was secretary of the Roman Accademia di San Luca.

In 1705, he joined the Academy and painted for various churches including the Cappuccini of Frascati and San Onofrio of Urbino. He also painted frescoes in the Villa Falconieri of Frascati.

Ghezzi is most renowned and admired for his caricatures. He produced thousands of portrait drawings and was highly skilled at capturing the essence of his subject with a few rapid strokes of his pen. He made many caricatures of members of the Papal and Jacobite courts, who are often depicted in a satirical fashion.

He died in Rome in 1755.

Antonio Canova

Antonio Canova was born in 1757 in Possagno, in the Venetian Republic. He is regarded as one of the greatest Neoclassical artists and famed in particular for his sculptural works in marble. His father was a stonecutter, and after his death in 1762, Canova was placed in the care of his paternal grandfather Pasino Canova. Pasino was a stonemason, owner of a quarry and a sculptor who specialised in altar statues and low reliefs which he executed in a late Baroque style. Canova’s grandfather introduced him to sculpting, which Canova showed a talent for from a young age – executing two shrines in marble at the age of nine. In 1770, Canova began work as an apprentice to Giuseppe Bernardi, followed by Giovanni Ferrari, where he worked until he attended the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia. At the Accademia, he won several awards. Following this he secured many important commissions, sculptures which he realised in the late Rococo style. These commissioned works were widely praised and Canova became a favourite of the Venetian elite. In 1779, Canova opened his own studio at Calle Del Traghetto at S. Maurizio. During this time, Canova received his first commission for a marble statue. The statue, which depicted Daedalus and Icarus, inspired great admiration and Canova was paid 100 gold zecchini on the completion of the work. In 1780 Canova travelled to Rome, the following year the Venetian ambassador at Rome hired him to sculpt Theseus and the Minotaur (now in the collection of the Victoria & Albert Museum, London). Between 1783 – 1787, Canova designed and sculpted a funerary monument dedicated to Clement XIV for the Church of Santi Apostoli. This work secured Canova’s reputation as the preeminent artist of his generation. In 1792, he completed another cenotaph, this time commemorating Clement XIII for St. Peter’s Basilica. The following decade was extremely productive for Canova, during which he began works such as Hercules and Lichas, Cupid and Psyche, Hebe, Tomb of Duchess Maria Christina of Saxony-Teschen, and The Penitent Magdalene. By 1800, Canova was the most celebrated artist in Europe. His reputation attracted patrons from France, England, Russia, Poland, Austria and Holland, as well as several members from different royal lineages. Among his list of patrons were Napoleon and his family, for whom Canova produced several depictions between 1803 and 1809. In 1802, Canova was assigned the post of ‘Inspector-General of Antiquities and Fine Art of the Papal State’, a position formerly held by Raphael. In 1814, he began his most famous work The Three Graces. In 1815, Canova was named ‘Minister Plenipotentiary of the Pope’, his role being to recover various works of art that were taken to Paris by Napoleon. In 1816, Canova returned to Rome triumphant, with a selection of works that he recovered. He was rewarded with several marks of distinction: he was appointed President of the Accademia di San Luca, inscribed into the “Golden Book of Roman Nobles” by the Pope’s own hands, and given the title of Marquis of Ischia.  Canova died in 1822 and his body was placed in the Tempio Canoviano. His memorial service was so grand that it rivalled the ceremony that the city of Florence held for Michelangelo in 1564.

Sébastien Bourdon

Sébastien Bourdon was born in Montpellier on 2nd February 1616 – his family were craftsmen of modest means. His father, Marin, was a painter and glazier, and his mother, Jeanne Gaultière, was the daughter of a master goldsmith. Sébastien was baptised on 10th February in Montpellier church. When he was six, Montpellier suffered a difficult time because it refused to recognise Louis XIII: under the leadership of the Prince of Condé, it resisted a siege by royal troops Although the town managed to hold out for three months, it finally surrendered and the king’s army took control in 1622. Sébastien, still only a child, was sent to Paris as an apprentice artist and around 1630 he went to Bordeaux and Toulouse, later moving back to the capital.

He continued his training in Rome which, although a dangerous place for a protestant like Bourdon, was considered to be the ideal place for an artist at that time. Whilst there he became a close friend of painter Louis de Boullogne (senior), who put pressure on him to renounce his faith, but without success. In 1636 he had to return to Paris because a painter with whom he had quarrelled threatened to denounce him as a heretic to the Inquisition in Rome.

On his arrival in Paris, he became very friendly with Louis du Guernier, a Protestant painter, and actually married his sister Suzanne, through this marriage he came into close contact with the Protestant circle of artists, goldsmiths and jewellers. In 1643, the corporation of goldsmiths chose him to paint their altarpiece, an annual gift to Notre Dame in Paris. The painting, called The Crucifixion of Saint Peter, can still be seen in Notre Dame today.

Sébastien’s son, Abraham, born in 1648, was baptised in the church at Charenton – his godfather was Abraham Bosse. In the same year, Sébastien Bourdon took an active part in the founding of the Academy and was one of the twelve “Elders”. From the very beginning he was a key member of a dynamic group of artists working for this institution – among them were his brother-in-law du Guernier, the two Testelins, Ferdinand Elle, Samuel Bernard, Thomas Pinagier and Abraham Bosse.

After moving to Stockholm in 1652, Queen Christine of Sweden, who considered him to be an outstanding artist, made him her first court painter. Following two successful years in this position Bourdon returned to Paris and completed some major commissions before returning to his hometown of Montpellier in 1957 where he had been asked to paint The Fall of Simon the Magician. This picture was to be hung above the main altar in the Saint Pierre cathedral and it can still be seen there today. While he was in Montpellier he also painted many portraits.

He died in Paris on 8^th May 1671. 

Pietro Benvenuti

Born on 8^th January 1769 in Arezzo, Tuscany, Pietro Benvenuti took his first influences from the style of Jacques-Louis David. He was a student of the Academy of Fine Arts of Florence, and then went on to study in Rome, 1792–1803, where he created an informal academy with long standing friend Vincenzo Cammuccini as well as Luigi Sabatelli. He returned to practice in Arezzo. 

In 1807 he was recruited as court painter to Elisa Bonaparte Baciocchi and to direct the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts. Alongside a group of collaborators and students Benvenuti was commissioned by Baciocchi in 1811 to decorate the new rooms of the Palazzo Pitti, where he painted an ambitious cycle of works dedicated to The stories and endeavours of Hercules. The decoration is subdivided into four large framed paintings on the walls – with Hercules at the crossroads, Hercules strangles the serpents, Hercules leading Alcesti to Admeto and The Battle of Hercules and the Centaurs – as well as ten monochrome frescoes below the vault featuring a depiction of the Marriage of Hercules and Hebe. Another prestigious commission, from the restored Grand Duke of Tuscany, Leopold II, was to fresco the dome of the Capella Medicea at San Lorenzo, where he depicted eight grand subjects taken from the Old and the New Testament, the four Prophets and the four Evangelists. Under Benvenuto’s guidance, Carlo Lasinio also engraved the Luca Giordano frescoes in Palazzo Medici-Riccardi. As well as this he was an associate of the Accademia di Brera in Milan, and in 1829 was elected into the National Academy of Design as an honorary member.

He died on 3rd February 1844 in Florence, still holding the position of Director of the Florentine Academy of Fine Arts. Whilst in the position he had taught many who would go on to become important names in the art world, including Giuseppe Bezzuoli, Gaspero Martellini, Tomasso Gazzarini, Niccola Cianfanelli, Luigi Mussini, and Giorgio Berti. 

Niccolò Boldrini

Niccolò Boldrini was born c1500 in Vicenza, in northern Italy.

There is little documented of his personal life or upbringing, but what we do know is that he was an engraver on wood, that he worked with Titian in 1566 and that he is responsible for the following works: John Baron de Schwarzenburg (after Dürer), The Wise Men’s Offering, St. Jerome praying in landscape, Six Saints including Catharine & Sebastian, Mountainous landscape with woman milking cow and Venus seated on a bank holding Cupid, Squirrel on a branch (all after Titian).

Many discussions have been held as to why Titian chose to depict the Caricature of the Laocoön Group scene, which Boldrini went on to make on woodcut. Some argue that it was an attempt to free his inventive mind from the influence of this sculpture for all future works whilst others suggest it was a response to a substandard work by an Italian sculptor of around that time. It is rumoured that Titian was actually his master and that he worked under him for a number of years before he died in Venice in c1566.

Luigi Ademollo

Luigi Ademollo was born in Milan on 30^th April 1764. He learned his craft at the Academy of Fine Arts of Brera in Milan, where he was taught by Giuliano Traballesi, Giocondo Albertolli and Giuseppe Piermarini. In 1783 he left Milan and spent a period of time travelling and working between Rome and Florence before, in 1789, being appointed as professor at the Academy of Fine Arts in Florence in the same year as he had completed the decorations of the Teatro della Pergola. He would go on to spend the major part of his life between Florence and Rome, where he married Margaret Cimballi Ferrara in 1792 and started what was to become a large family.

In Florence he worked in the chapel of the Palazzo Pitti and in various rooms of the same palace, as well as in the Basilica della Santissima Annunziata, and in the Pucci and Capponi palaces. He also worked for churches in Bergamo, Brescia, Lucca, Livorno, Pisa and Siena. Although Ademollo primarily painted frescoes with biblical scenes from the Old and New Testaments, his abilities as a decorator were accompanied by considerable literary culture, and his son Agostino Ademollo (1799–1841) would go on to be a writer of romances, including Marietta di’ Ricci.

He died in Florence on 11^th February 1849 

Jean Baptiste Wicar

The son of a carpenter, Jean Baptiste Wicar was born in Lille on 22^nd January 1762. He studied drawing at the free school in Lille before further honing his talents at the studio of Jacques-Louis David. The drawings Wicar created of tableaux, paintings, statues, bas-reliefs and cameos in the Gallery of Florence and at the Pitti Palace were published in four volumes at the Lacombe publishing house of Paris between 1789 and 1807.

During the French Revolution Wicar headed the Commission des Sciences et des Arts, which had been set up to loot artworks from the Austrian Netherlands in order to enrich museums in France. An initial convoy from the commission left Antwerp on 11^th August 1794, notably with paintings by Rubens, for the Louvre. Abbeys and castles were targeted and then systematically emptied of their contents, furniture and works of art. Wicar was also a member of the commission during their Italian campaign, in the entourage of Napoleon Bonaparte. This commission was similarly charged with seizing artworks that could enrich French national museum collections.

He finally permanently settled in Rome in 1800 and became a portraitist of European renown as well as teaching Italian illustrator and engraver Francesco Giangiacomo, who documented many of the works there.

Having remained in Rome until his death in 1834, Wicar left an extensive collection of 1,300 drawings he had accumulated over his lifetime to the Société des Sciences, de l’Agriculture et des Arts de Lille. Most of these were from the Italian school, but also in some small measure from the northern schools, it held drawings by artists like Raphael, Albrecht Dürer, Lucas Cranach, Nicolas Poussin and Jacques-Louis David. This legacy initially formed the public Musée Wicar, which in 1866 merged into the Palais des beaux-arts de Lille.

Giovanni De Min

Giovanni De Min was born in Belluno in the Veneto region of northern Italy on 24^th October 1786.

As the son of a domestic servant he was born into humble beginnings, and therefore without the patronage of the Falier family of San Vitale he would not have been able to attend the Academy of Fine Arts in Venice following his discovery by Paolo de Filippi whilst completing an apprenticeship in Padua. Whilst there he studied alongside Francesco Hayez, with whom he would go onto work, and was a pupil of Teodoro Matteini and Pietro Tantini.

In 1808, De Min was awarded a stipend from the Academy to study in Rome, where he fell under the influence of neoclassical artists such as Antonio Canova. Upon returning to Venice De Min mainly dedicated himself to fresco or panel decoration of houses and salons, regularly working with Hayez and using predominantly mythological figures for his works. In 1817 he completed the now lost decorations in Palazzo Cicognara using the designs of Hayez, before in 1819 collaborating with him again to help decorate the palace of Count Giovanni Papadopoli in San Marina, where he depicted Leda, Diana and Actaeon, Salmacis and Hermaphrodite, Callisto, Venus and the Graces. He also painted The Four Elements and The Dream of Love for Casa Comello near San Canciano in Venice. In 1819, following the death of Angelo Pizzi and with the support of Count Cicognara, De Min was named as professor of sculpture at Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia.

It is not clear how active he was as a professor since by 1818 De Min had already relocated to Padua where he was very active as an artist, working on the decoration of Palazzo Pesaro-Papafava with subjects from the Iliad before painting A Triumph of Rossini (1822) in Palazzo Treves de’ Bonfili. In a further collaboration with Hayez he also painted a series of mythologic subjects: Convito degli Dei, Triumph and Marriage of Bacchus and Ariadne, Mars and Venus, and Venus and Ascanius (1821–24) in Palazzo Rusconi Sacerdoti. In 1824-25, he painted the Story of Psyche, and episodes from Tasso’s work in Palazzo Gaudio. In 1825, in the Palazzo Rossi, now Moschini, he painted mythologic subjects. In 1828, in Palazzo Revedin, he painted La Fortuna, Laocoön, Ulysses kills Procedus. In this same decade he also painted the Education of Achilles and Apotheosis of Canova inside Palazzo Crescini, Trieste. For the Fasolo house he painted Erminia saves Tancred, Jove and Juno and Leda, then between 1829 and 1831 he frescoed the Story of Psyche for Palazzo Treves de’ Bonfili in Venice, a palace where Ludovico Lipparini, Borsato, Cicognara and others were employed. He also painted a large historic canvas of the Massacre of Alberico da Romano and his family, which only is now known through an 1839 lithography by Francesco Locatello.

In his later years De Min moved to Ceneda, near present-day Vittorio Veneto, Treviso, and painted frescoes in churches and Villas including La Lotta delle Spartane in Villa dei Patt near Belluno. He also painted the Council Hall of Palazzo Rosso in Belluno and in 1837 a salon of Villa Gera in Conegliano. 

He died in Tarzo on November 23^rd 1859.

Gian Lorenzo Bernini

Gian Lorenzo Bernini was born in Naples on 7^th December 1598, beginning his career under the direction of his father, Pietro Bernini, a Florentine sculptor. At a young age, his remarkable talent earned him the patronage of Pope Paul V. His work was inspired by his in-depth study of Michelangelo and of the ancient Greek and Roman marbles at the Vatican. He established himself as an independent sculptor, with his first life-size sculptures commissioned by Scipione Cardinal Borghese, a member of the papal group. The series included Aeneas, Anchises, and Ascanius Fleeing Troy, Pluto and Proserpina, Apollo and Daphne, and David (not to be confused with the well-known Michelangelo sculpture) and demonstrates the development of Bernini’s unique style that would be later termed as the Baroque Style. His sculptures enacted movement and true-to-life physical features of the mythological figures, while remaining grand and exquisite.

After being knighted in 1621 at the age of 23, Bernini literally began to take over Rome, not only with his sculptures, but also with important architectural commissions and his other occupations as painter, playwright, composer, theatre designer, and caricaturist. Rome was to remain his home for many successful years, which included architectural works for St. Peter’s Basilica and Palazzo Barberini as well as a number of commissions under the influence and patronage of pontificate Urban VIII, who had encouraged him to paint and practice architecture as well as continuing his prolific accomplishments as a sculptor

In 1665 Bernini finally left Rome and travelled to France on the invitation of King Louis XIV. His primary task was to design a royal residence but whilst there he sculpted a bust of King Louis XIV, creating a portrait that was so pristine it became the standard for royal portraits for nearly 100 years.

The number of important works he created in his 81 years, under eight different popes, is almost too vast to name, including: The Rapture of Proserpina, 1621-1622; Ecstasy of Santa Teresa, 1647-1651, (Church of Santa María de la Victoria, Rome); Fountain of the Four Rivers, 1651, (Piazza Navona, Rome); Ecstasy of Blessed Ludovica Albertoni, 1671-1674, (Church of San Francesco a Ripa, Rome); Apollo and Daphne, 1622-1625, (Borghese Gallery, Rome); David, 1623-1624, San Longino, 1629-1638 (Basilica of San Pedro, The Vatican); Baldachin of San Pedro, 1624-1632 (Basilica of San Pedro, The Vatican); Fountain of the Triton, 1642-1643 (Piazza Barberini, Rome).

He died on 28^th November 1680 in Rome.

Francesco Coghetti

Francesco Coghetti was born on 12^th July 1801 in Bergamo, which lies close to Milan in the north of Italy. He was fortunate enough to be born into wealthy family and as such was able to be educated at prestigious private schools. After completing his primary studies, he enrolled at Accademia Carrara, where he studied with Giuseppe Diotti. In 1818, he won the Accademia’s drawing competition.

In 1820 he moved to Milan, and he following year he won an award for drawing and design from the Accademia di Belle Arti di Brera. This encouraged him to move to Rome and, thanks to his father’s financial support, he was able to study with Vincenzo Camuccini. He also enjoyed the patronage of Cardinal Angelo Mai, who was a fellow ‘Bergamaschi’. In 1825, he was married. The 1830s were a very successful time for him, during which he won several awards and received a continual flow of commissions from all over Europe.

In 1844, he was offered the position of Director at the Academy of San Carlos in Mexico City, but declined to accept. Fourteen years later, faced with declining commissions, he accepted a position as President of the Accademia di San Luca. In the late 1860s, he became involved in politics as well as art, when preparations were being made for the Papal States to be annexed to the Kingdom of Italy. The Accademia was considered to be part of the Pope’s temporal domain and was transformed into the “Royal Academy”.

It was a difficult process and, because he had already come under criticism for his performance in office, he was relieved of his teaching duties in 1873 and suspended as President. Two years later, on 20^th April 1875 in Rome, he died of apoplexy after a sudden loss of consciousness.