Who is Francesco Zuccarelli?

Giacomo Francesco Zuccarelli (commonly known as Francesco Zuccarelli, Italian pronunciation: [franˈtʃesko ddzukkaˈrɛlli; ttsuk-]; 15 August 1702 – 30 December 1788) RA, was an Italian player of the late Baroque or Rococo period. He is considered to be the most important landscape painter to have emerged from his adopted city of Venice during the mid-eighteenth century, and his Arcadian views became popular throughout Europe and especially in England where he resided for two outstretched periods. His patronage lengthy to the nobility, and he often collaborated with further artists such as Antonio Visentini and Bernardo Bellotto. In 1768, Zuccarelli became a founding believer of the Royal Academy of Arts, and upon his unchangeable return to Italy, he was elected president of the Venetian Academy. In addition to his rural landscapes which frequently incorporated religious and classical themes, Zuccarelli created devotional pieces and upon occasion did portraiture. Beside paintings, his varied output included etchings, drawings, and designs for tapestries as competently as a set of Old Testament playing cards.

Despite the fame he experienced in his lifetime, Zuccarelli’s reputation declined in the upfront 19th century afterward naturalism becoming increasingly favoured in landscapes. Turner criticized him in mild terms even if confessing that his figures could be beautiful, paving the showing off for more scratchy Victorian assessments. In 1959, the art historian Michael Levey offered suggestions for why Zuccarelli held such broad contemporary attraction among the English, concluding that his best accomplish is severely decorative. More recently, since the 1990s there has been a renewed focus upon Zuccarelli in the course of Italian scholars, who have answer him inflection in several books and articles, and his paintings and drawings are regularly shown in exhibitions.