Guardi Gianantonio

The elder brother of the painter of the well-known and very characteristic vedute (views) of Venice Francesco Guardi (1712-1793), Gianantonio Guardi led a rich but also mercurial professional life, thanks, for the most part, to his virtuosity as well as his extraordinary knowledge of Italian painting, both of the Baroque and the Renaissance. A brilliant copier but also the author of paintings of exotic themes (quadri turchi) Gianantonio worked for fifteen entire years exclusively for the chief of the Imperial Army, Mathias von Schulemburg, whose collection in Hanover was one of the most splendid in Europe, at least as far as the work of Venetian painters of the period was concerned.