Giuseppe Artioli

Italian painter, originally of Cento, but active in Mantua. He was the Italian pioneer of the Neoclassical revival of encaustic, or molten beeswax, medium, an ancient technique, which Pliny the Elder describes in his Natural History. Neoclassical painting drew its ideas and motifs from Graeco-Roman art and artifacts and from the Renaissance classicism of Raphael. The excavations of Herculaneum and Pompei, dating from 1738 and 1748, respectively, stimulated the interest of artists, amateurs and collectors throughout Western Europe. Artioli was the principal artist in the encaustic academy of palazzo Bianchi (today Palazzo Castiglioni or Bonacolsi) in Mantua.

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