Francesco
Fontebasso

In 1762, entered into a contract with the Academy of Arts in the teaching of drawing and perspective painting. Taught at the Academy of fine Arts history painting (1762) Wrote to the Academy a picture of "the Accession to the throne of Empress Catherine II". (Kondakov)

1709, Venice — 1769, Venice. Italian painter, master of Venetian school. Student S. Ricci and follower of John. B. Tiepolo. From 1736 member of the Academy of fine arts of Venice, Professor of drawing. In the 1730s, visited Bologna and Rome, where he became acquainted with the works of masters of the Bolognese and Roman schools, he worked in Trento. Became one of the main conductors of the ideals of Neoclassicism in Lombardy. In the paintings of Antiochus and stratonice; the Magnanimity of Scipio (both Budapest, Museum of fine arts) large elongated figures of mythological and historical heroes are treated with exaggerated plasticism artists of Bologna and Rome. Theatrical, full of pathos gestures reminiscent of the style of S. and J. Ritchie. A. Pellegrini. The spots of yellow and blue and white eye shadow intense discord with the General reddish-brown colour. For a long time the paintings of Fontebasso Phenomenon of the Madonna of St. Anthony of Padua and St. Paul and St. Francis (Bordeaux, musée des Beaux-arts) was considered by S. Ricci.

Unusual Venetian manner of painting showtest in the interpretation of the figures noticeable and in the monumental work of F. Fontebasso (fresco dome, Venice, Palazzo Contarini; the mural of the apparition of the Madonna to Abraham, 1750 e, Venice, the Church dei Gesuiti). Fontebasso, one of the first applied to the grisaille, performing this technique in painting the ceiling of the Palazzo Farsetti on the Grand canal. He is portrayed here a lot of allegorical figures, representing the triumph of a noble patrician family, and placed them according to Emilian tradition, at the bottom edge of frescoes. However, likened to sculpture sculptures shapes when considering the bottom seem fake and ethereal, as all of the paintings, devoid of superior quality — bright and festive brilliance. In comparison with earlier works, Fontebasso the 1730s, for example, his best frescoes of Diana and Endymion, or the judgment of Paris (both Venice, Palazzo Baldu), executed in bright colours (its immediacy and lyricism they resemble the works of Tiepolo in the Archbishop's Palace in Udine), monochrome grisaille painting of the Palazzo Farsetti look more lifeless. Fontebasso, was also invited by Catherine II to St. Petersburg to work on the paintings in the Winter Palace.

Lit.: Pullucchini R. La pittura veneziana del Settecento. Venezia; Rome, 1960; Precerutti-Garberi M. settecenteschi Affreschi delle ville venete. Milano, 1968.

E. Fedotova