GIOVANNI ANTONIO GUARDI (1747)

Painter of the 18th-century Venetian school.

He was trained by his father Domenico Guardi.

After his father´s death in 1716 Giovanni Antonio worked for a time under the internationally known religious painter of the Venetian school G.B. Pittoni before opening his own studio.

Here he and his two brothers Francesco and Niccolò specialized in paintings of religious and genre subjects as well as copies of earlier masters.

Only one painting signed by Giovanni Antonio a "Death of St. Joseph" (Berlin) survives though a few signed drawings are known.

With his brothers he probably worked on the decoration of the sacristy of the parish church at Vigo d´Anaunia in the Trentino (1735-38).

There is still much dispute about the precise part played by each of the three brothers in these and other works like the altarpieces in the parish churches at Belvedere di Aquileia and Cerete Basso (c. 1755).

Some scholars have recently accepted Giovanni Antonio as the author of the famous paintings of the story of Tobit on the organ loft of the church of the Angelo Raffaele at Venice (before 1750). If that series is by his hand he must be counted as one of the most important painters of the Venetian Rococo.