Pietro Bianchi (painter)

Immaculate Conception by Bianchi, Santa Maria degli Angeli, Rome

Pietro Bianchi (September 1694 – 2 September 1740) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period, active in Genoa and Rome.

Biography

Pietro’s father, Giovanni Bianchi, had moved from Sarzana to Rome in 1682. His sister was married to an attendant to the household of the Marchese Marcello Sacchetti, who noted the boy Pietro’s affinity for drawing. As a boy he was place in the apprenticeship of a painter J. Triga, but then passed on to work in the school of the Genoese Giovanni Battista Gaulli. In 1707, at age 13, he won a drawing competition sponsored by the Accademia di San Luca. In 1709, when Gaulli died, and he entered the studio of Giuseppe Ghezzi then under Benedetto Luti. He painted both religious stories and still life pictures of animals, flowers, and fruits.

He painted a St. Clara at Gubbio, and a picture of the Conception for the church of Santa Maria degli Angeli at Rome, of which a mosaic copy is in a chapel of St. Peter's Basilica.

Bianchi died at 46 years of age. Gaetano Sardi was one of his pupils.^[1] Giovanni Frossi was another pupil.

References

1. Supplemento alla Serie dei trecento elogi e ritratti degli uomini i più illustri in Pittura , Scultura, e Architettura. by Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi, published by Stamperia Allegrini, Pisoni, e comp, Florence (1776); column 1407.

• Bryan, Michael (1886). Robert Edmund Graves, ed. Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical (Volume I: A-K). York St. #4, Covent Garden, London; Original from Fogg Library, Digitized May 18, 2007: George Bell and Sons. p. 125.
• Soprani, Raffaello (1769). Carlo Giuseppe Ratti, ed. Delle vite de' pittori, scultori, ed architetti genovesi; Tomo secundo. Stamperia Casamara in Genoa, dalle Cinque Lampadi, con licenza de Superiori; Digitized by Googlebooks from Oxford University copy on Feb 2, 2007. p. 292.

Media related to Pietro Bianchi at Wikimedia Commons