Giovanni Volpato

Giovanni Volpato, also known as Joan(nes) or Ioann(es) Volpato[1] (1733, Bassano 21 August 1803, Rome),[2] was an Italian engraver. He was also an excavator, dealer in antiquities and manufacturer of biscuit porcelain figurines.

Giovanni Volpato (Angelica Kauffman, 1794/5)

Biography

Giovanni Volpato was born in Bassano del Grappa (then in the state of Venice). He received his first training from his mother, an embroiderer, and then studied under Giovanni Antonio Remondini. In 1762 he went to Venice and worked with Joseph Wagner and Francesco Bartolozzi, engraving several plates after Piazzetta, Mariotto, Amiconi, Zuccarelli, Marco Ricci and others. He worked for some time for the Duke of Parma, until a plate of the Monument of Francesco Algarotti in Pisa brought him wider notice.

Engraving of a drawing of the Macellum of Pozzuoli (IT). Signed: Joan. Baptista Natali del. & Joan. Volpato, scul. Venetiis, 1768

In 1768 a bilingual book (Latin and Italian) was published in Naples by Paolo Antonio Paoli, president of the Pontifical Ecclesiastical Academy in Rome (1775-1798), treating the subject of the "Remains of the Antiquities Existing in Pozzuoli, Cumae, and Baiae", [see Further Reading below] containing a series of 16 engravings by Joan. Volpato ("sculp. Venetiis", i.e. engraver from Venice), based, a.o., on drawings by Joan. Baptista Natali, also known as Giovanni Battista Natali (III). This offers strong evidence that Giovanni Volpato, from Venice, was also known under the name Joan. (or Ioann.) Volpato, further corroborated by sources from the Library of Congress (LOC), USA[3] and the German Archaeological Institute (DAI).[4]

In 1771, following a suggestion of his patron Girolamo Zulian, he moved to Rome, where he founded an illustrious school of engraving and gained a considerable reputation[2] for his series of plates after the frescoes of the Raphael Rooms and Loggias in the Vatican (1770–77). Some of these plates were hand-coloured by Francesco Panini, and did not necessarily reproduce the actual design or subjects of the Loggias' vaults and pilasters, but they became much in demand among visitors to Rome. Volpato also engraved a set of plates after Annibale Caracci's decorations in the Palazzo Farnese. He engraved a series of landscapes and vedute of Rome with Pietro Ducros.

Volpato was a friend of the British history painter, art dealer[5] and antiquarian, Gavin Hamilton. When Volpato himself became an excavator, he supplied Hamilton with some sculptures and engravings for his Schola Italica Picturae, while Hamilton introduced him to clients interested in his findings and publications.

Volpato made excavations in Ostia (1779, with the antiquarian Thomas Jenkins), Porta San Sebastiano (1779) and Quadraro (1780); and sold sculptures to king Gustav III of Sweden (1784), to the Vatican Museums, and to the British collector, Henry Blundell. In 1780, collaborating with Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros, he published a series of hand-coloured engravings after watercolours of "the Views of Rome and the Surrounding Countryside".[5]

In 1788 he sold the celebrated Roman 'Lante' Vase — a monumental vase found in fragments in Hadrian's Villa at Tivoli and known to have been in the Villa Lante (owned by the noble Lante della Rovere family) as early as 1639 [6] — to Colonel John Campbell (the later 1st Lord Cawdor), which Lord John Russell, the later 6th Duke of Bedford, purchased in 1800 for display at the Sculpture Gallery of Woburn Abbey, where it can still be seen to this day.[6]

From 1787 to 1792, Volpato worked on a second series of 14 views in the Museo Pio-Clementino.[5] In 1792, again in collaboration with Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros,[7][8] he published this series of prints of the interiors of the new Vatican Museo Pio-Clementino.[9]

In 1785, he established a porcelain factory that made ceramic replicas in biscuit-porcelain of Greco-Roman originals to satisfy the demand for antique art during the Neoclassical period.[10] Its most ambitious piece, the "Personification of the River Nile", is on permanent display at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York.

One of his pupils was his son in law, Raffaello Morghen. Volpato died in Rome.

I Burattini, c. 1770
Detail of a pilaster of the Raphael's Loggia with marine fauna and mythological subjects. Engraving, 1774

Among his plates for Gavin Hamilton are:

Further reading

  • Ilaria Bignamini, Clare Hornsby, Digging and Dealing in Eighteenth-Century Rome (2010. Yale U.P.), p. 339-340
  • L. Melegati, 'Giovanni Volpato e il cantiere romano', in Ricordi dell'antico: sculture, porcellane e arredi all'epoca del Grand Tour, ed. A. d'Agliano, L. Melegati [exhibition catalogue, Musei Capitolini, Rome] (2008), p. 101-114
  • F. Haskell, 'The Museo Pio-Clementino in Rome and the Views by Ducros and Volpato', in Louis Ducros: Images of the Grand Tour [exhibition catalogue, Kenwood House, London] (1985), p. 36-39
  • C. Faccioli, 'Anni ed Epistolario romano d'un grande incisore bassanese, Giovanni Volpato', in L'Urbe; 32:3 (1969), p. 18-35
  • H. Honour, 'Statuettes after the antique: Volpato's Roman porcelain factory', in Apollo; 85 (1967 May), p. 371-373
  • Bryan, Michael (1889). Walter Armstrong; Robert Edmund Graves (eds.). Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical. Vol. II L-Z. London: George Bell and Sons. pp. 681–682.
  • Hind, Arthur (1963). A History of Engraving & Etching, from the 15th century to the year 1914. New York: Dover Publications, INC. pp. 209, 364.
  • Dacos, Nicole (2008). The Loggia of Raphael, a Vatican art treasure. Libreria Editrice Vaticana, Abbeville Press Publisher. pp. 318–320.
  • Paoli, Paolo Antonio. (1768). Antiquitatum Puteolis Cumis Baiis Existentium Reliquiae. Avanzi delle antichità esistenti a Pozzuoli, Cuma e Baja. [Remains of the Antiquities Existing in Pozzuoli, Cumae, and Baiae]. Napoli: [s.n.], Anno A.C.N.MDCCLXVIII (with full book scan available at German Archaeological Institute (iDAI) ), containing a.o. bilingual texts (35 Folia) and 96 engravings, of which 16 are co-signed by Joan. Volpato, sculp. Venetiis

References

  1. A series of engravings (ca. 1780) after paintings in the Vatican by Raphael (1483 - 1520), titled PIO SEXTO PONT. MAX. and depicting, a.o.: "The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila", "The School of Athens"; "The Mass at Bolsena", "The Expulsion of Heliodorus from the Temple", "The Meeting of Leo the Great and Attila", "The fire in the Borgo in Rome" are signed by Joannes (or Ioannes) Volpato, his Latinised name.
  2. "Oxford Art Online - Search Results for Giovanni Volpato". Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Retrieved 2023-04-07.
  3. "Remains of the Antiquities Existing in Puteoli, Cumae, and Baiae". Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. 20540 USA. Retrieved 2023-04-07.
  4. "iDAI.objects arachne (in short: Arachne), the central objects' data bank of the Deutsches Archäologisches Institut (DAI)". arachne.dainst.org. Retrieved 2023-04-07.
  5. "Oxford Art Online - Search Results for Schola Italica Picturae". Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Retrieved 2023-04-07.
  6. "Study of the heads on the Lante Vase; formerly in the Villa Lante | British Museum". The British Museum. Retrieved 2023-04-07.
  7. "Fourteen views of the Museo Pio-Clementino by Abraham-Louis-Rodolphe Ducros and Giovanni Volpato". Sotheby's. Retrieved 7 April 2023.
  8. "Oxford Art Online - Search Results for Louis Ducros". Benezit Dictionary of Artists. Retrieved 2023-04-07. Biography : Ducros, Abraham Louis Rodolphe or Ducroz: Swiss, 18th – 19th century, male. Born April 1748, in Yverdon; died 10 February 1810, in Lausanne. Painter (including gouache), watercolourist , engraver, draughtsman. History painting, architectural views, interiors with figures, landscapes, landscapes with figures. Ducros, who seems to have been self-educated spent the greater part of his artistic life in Italy, which puts him among the number of artists who succumbed to the fashion of the Grand Tour at the end of the 18th century. He lived in Italy.
  9. F. Haskell, 'The Museo Pio-Clementino in Rome and the Views by Ducros and Volpato', in Louis Ducros: Images of the Grand Tour [exhibition catalogue, Kenwood House, London] (1985), p.36-39.
  10. H. Honour, 'Statuettes after the antique: Volpato's Roman porcelain factory', in Apollo; 85 (1967 May), p.371-373.
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