Teodoro Ghisi was an Italian painter and artist.
(b Mantua, 1536; d 1601). Painter, draughtsman, illustrator and naturalist, brother of (1) Giorgio Ghisi. He was custodian of the Palazzo del Te, Mantua, where his natural history collection attracted a visit in 1571 from Ulisse Aldrovandi, for whom he executed some animal paintings, including those of two parrots. At around the same time he created the designs for Giorgio's engravings of Venus and Adonis and Angelica and Medoro

Angelica and Medoro

Angelica and Medoro was a popular theme for Romantic painters, composers and writers from the sixteenth until the nineteenth century. Angelica and Medoro are two characters from the siwteenth-century Italian epic Orlando Furioso by Ludovico Ariosto...

. In 1576 he and Giorgio acquired a house in Mantua, where Teodoro worked for Guglielmo Gonzaga, 3rd Duke of Mantua, and Vincenzo I, 4th Duke of Mantua. Between 1579 and 1581 he contributed to the decoration of the Galleria dei Mesi in the Palazzo Ducale and probably worked with Lorenzo Costa the younger

Lorenzo Costa the Younger

Lorenzo Costa the Younger, who was born in 1537, was the son of Girolamo Costa, and was instructed in the art of painting by his uncle Ippolito. He worked in concert with Taddeo Zuccaro in the Belvedere at Rome, about 1560, and died in 1583.-References:...

 in the Sala dello Zodiaco there. Around 1579 he executed the Visitation for the cathedral at Carpi, and in 1586-7 he worked in the Palazzo di Goito (destr.). From 1587 to 1590 he was court painter

Court painter

A court painter was an artist who painted for the members of a royal or noble family, sometimes on a fixed salary and on an exclusive basis where the artist was not supposed to undertake other work. Especially in the late Middle Ages, they were often given the office of valet de chambre...

 to Guglielmo Gonzaga's brother-in-law Archduke Charles II of Austria (1564–90), in Seckau and Graz, where he painted the altarpiece Symbolum apostolorum (1588; Graz, Alte Gal.), showing the Creation of Eve, surrounded by depictions of articles of the Nicene Creed. He received a life pension from the Archduke in 1589 but returned to Mantua in 1590. There he and IPPOLITO ANDREASI decorated the cathedral for Bishop Francesco Gonzaga, with frescoes that accorded with the dictates of the Counter-Reformation. The evangelists' animal symbols attest to Teodoro's continuing interest in nature. He indulged this further in his illustrations for Pietro Candido Decembrio's De animantium naturis (Rome, Vatican, Bib. Apostolica, MS. Urb. lat. 276). In general his work is more realistic than imaginative.

Ghisi was born in Mantua

Mantua

Mantua is a city and comune in Lombardy, Italy and capital of the province of the same name. Mantua's historic power and influence under the Gonzaga family, made it one of the main artistic, cultural and notably musical hubs of Northern Italy and the country as a whole...

, his brother was the engraver Giorgio Ghisi

Giorgio Ghisi

Giorgio Ghisi was an Italian artist in engraving and painting. Born in Mantua, he trained with Marcantonio Raimondi and subsequently worked with Hieronymus Cock in Antwerp....

who he periodically collaborated with. He specialized in paintings of animal and nature scenes. He died in 1601.