Giovanni Antonio Guardi (1699 – January 23, 1760), also known as Gianantonio Guardi, was an Italian

Italy

Italy , officially the Italian Republic languages]] under the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages. In each of these, Italy's official name is as follows:;;;;;;;;), is a unitary parliamentary republic in South-Central Europe. To the north it borders France, Switzerland, Austria and...

 painter. Guardi was one of the founders of the Venetian Academy in 1756.

Biography

Born at Vienna

Vienna

Vienna is the capital and largest city of the Republic of Austria and one of the nine states of Austria. Vienna is Austria's primary city, with a population of about 1.723 million , and is by far the largest city in Austria, as well as its cultural, economic, and political centre...

, he was the son of a minor Baroque

Baroque

The Baroque is a period and the style that used exaggerated motion and clear, easily interpreted detail to produce drama, tension, exuberance, and grandeur in sculpture, painting, literature, dance, and music...

 painter from Trentino, and the elder brother of the more famous Francesco Guardi

Francesco Guardi

Francesco Lazzaro Guardi was a Venetian painter of veduta, a member of the Venetian School. He is considered to be among the last practitioners, along with his brothers, of the classic Venetian school of painting....

.

He may have received his artistic training in Vienna, where he is first recorded in 1719, but had established a workshop in Venice by 1730. Among his first important clients was the connoisseur and collector Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg

Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg

Reichsfreiherr and Reichsgraf Marshal Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg was a distinguished aristocrat and general of Brandenburg-Prussian descent who served in the Saxon and Venetian armies in the early eighteenth century and found a second career in retirement in Venice, as a grand...

, for whom Guardi multiple paintings with an Orientalist

Orientalism

Orientalism is a term used for the imitation or depiction of aspects of Eastern cultures in the West by writers, designers and artists, as well as having other meanings...

 theme. He produced copies after the work of other artists, as well as a series of originals with Turkish-inspired interiors as easel pictures for private decoration. Antonio Guardi trained his younger brothers Nicolò and Francesco in his workshop, the latter working closely with him as a figure painter before establishing himself as a vedutista in the late 1750s.

A founder member of the Accademia Veneziana in 1756, the elder Guardi produced several works for churches in Venice, notably in the Church of the Angelo San Raffaele, as well as decorative cycles for palaces and villas in the city and the surrounding terraferma.

Francesco Casanova was among his pupils.

He died in Venice

Venice

Venice is a city in northern Italy which is renowned for the beauty of its setting, its architecture and its artworks. It is the capital of the Veneto region...

in 1760.