Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini

Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini (1675–1741) was born in Venice, the son of a shoemaker from Padua, and trained under the Milanese painter Paolo Pagani, with whom he travelled to Moravia and Vienna in 1690. Sebastiano Ricci was an important influence on his work, and around 1704 he married Angela Carriera, sister of Rosalba Carriera. He was one of the leading Venetian history painters of the early eighteenth century, joining the manner of Paolo Veronese to the Baroque of Pietro da Cortona and Luca Giordano, and is seen as an important forerunner of Tiepolo. He travelled widely on commissions. Invited to England by the Earl of Manchester in 1708, he painted murals at Kimbolton Castle, Castle Howard and Narford Hall, became a director of Kneller's Academy and submitted designs for the dome of St Paul's, losing the commission to James Thornhill. He went on to work in Düsseldorf, The Hague, Prague, Dresden and Vienna, and painted a ceiling for John Law's bank in Paris. He died in Venice in 1741. Here: Rebecca at the Well.