Bellucci Antonio
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(b Pieve di Soligo, 1654; d Pieve di Soligo, 1726).
Italian painter,
active also in Austria, Germany and England. He studied drawing with
a nobleman Domenico Difnico in Sebenico (Sibenik) in Dalmatia (now
part of Croatia, at that time a Venetian colony) and went to Venice
around 1675. His first works were influenced by Pietro Liberi,
Andrea Celesti and Antonio Zanchi, as is apparent from the large
canvas showing St Lorenzo Giustiniani, first Patriarch of Venice,
praying for the city’s deliverance from the plague of 1447 (c. 1691;
Venice, S Pietro di Castello, choir). In the following years, in
response to Veronese, his palette became lighter. The first of his
contacts with Austria was made in 1692, when he executed four
altarpieces depicting scenes from the lives of various saints for
the church of Klosterneuburg (in situ). From 1695 to 1700 he lived
in Vienna; he was back in Venice in 1700 and returned to Vienna in
1702. During his years in Vienna he decorated the grandiose ceilings
of the Palais Liechtenstein with the Triumph of Hercules and
allegorical scenes that look back to Bolognese decorative painters,
such as Carlo Cignani. He is recorded in Venice again in 1704, and
in 1705 he travelled to Düsseldorf to work for John William, Elector
of the Palatinate, a member of the Wittelsbach family; he worked
there almost continuously until his patron’s death in 1716. Among
the paintings executed for John William’s country seat, Schloss
Bensberg, are the Marriage of John William with Anna Maria Luisa de’
Medici and Elector Palatine John William Handing the Baton of
Command to his Son (both Munich, Alte Pin.). From 1716 to 1722
Bellucci was in England, where he fulfilled several commissions for
James Brydges, 1st Duke of Chandos, including the decoration of two
ceilings (destr.) at Cannons, the Duke’s country house in Middlesex.
Bellucci is one of the best representatives of the transition from
the rhetorical Venetian late Baroque to the lighter style of the
18th century. His work was particularly important for his pupil
Antonio Balestra and for the early development of Sebastiano Ricci.
