Antonio Rolli

1643 – 1696

Italian painter. Antonio Rolli and his brother Gioseffo (Giuseppe) Rolli were quadratura painters in Bologna. Antonio studied with Angelo Michele Colonna, while Giuseppe with Domenico Maria Canuti , in the 1670s. The brothers contributed to the decoration of the church of Santi Bartolomeo e Gaetano (1686-92), and the church of San Paolo Maggiore (1695-96) in Bologna. They belonged to the quadratura painters in Bologna who produced church ceilings with a visual predominance of the painted architecture. Painters of this style (e.g. Domenico Maria Canuti and Enrico Haffner) also found their way to Rome in the second half of the seventeenth century. In 1696, shortly before he completed the large ceiling painting in San Paolo Maggiore, Bologna, fate saw to it that he fell from his scaffolding.

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