SEBASTIANO RICCI BIOGRAPHY

 

Sebastiano Ricci was born in Belluno in 1659. His artistic apprenticeship began in Venice where he gained a remarkable reputation: he is considered, in fact, by contemporaries, one of the main figures of the rebirth of the Venetian Painting of the eighteenth century.
Ricci introduces a type of painting based on the studies of Paolo Veronese’s works and on the examples of the late Baroque, which had a great influence on the development of Venetian art from the 18th century. 

A student at Venezia of F.Cervelli, at the age of 22 he moves to Bologna to escape an accusation of manslaughter and started wandering around the cities of central Italy such as Modena, Florence, Rome and Parma before moving to Vienna to work in the Castle of Schönbrunn.

In Bologna, the artist gets to know the work of Carracci, in Parma he collaborates with F. Bibiena to decorate the Oratory of the Madonna del Serraglio, which reveals the influence of Correggio and Parmigianino. In Rome he studies the works of P. da Cortona, G.Lanfranco, G.B Gaulli.

He returned to Italy in 1696 as a renowned decorator and oil painter, he received many important commissions in Venice and Florence. From 1712 he worked in England with his nephew Marco and created bright works that confirm his international fame. 

He will remain in London until the completion of the decorations of St Paul’s Dome and of the Hampton Court Palace. While returning home, Ricci stops in Paris where he has the chance to meet the Rococo painter Jean Antoine Watteau, in whose studio he copies some drawings that will be completed once he returns to Italy.

Despite his life as a vagrant, which did not allow him to have many commissions, his travelling career contributed to the diffusion of the awareness of Italian Decorative Art, conquering with his lively style, light and bright colours, clients from the ecclesiastical world and courts from all over Europe.
Sebastiano Ricci died in 1734.