Giovan Battista Viola

1576 – 1622

Italian painter. He was a student of Annibale Carracci, whose landscape style he practiced. He collaborated with Domenichino in the Stanza di Apollo in the Villa Aldobrandini at Frascati. He painted the backgrounds of four pictures executed by Domenichino for Prince Ludovisi at Zagarolo. As a landscape specialist he presumably worked at various sites, where his arts would have been most suitable and appreciated, but many of these buildings have suffered serious damage or even been destroyed with time. Viola lived in the parish of Sant'Andrea della Fratte in Rome. In 1612 he shared a house with his compatriot, Francesco Albani. The following new Year's day he married Silvia Gemelli, and Albani then wed her daughter Anna in 1613, so Viola actually became Albani's father-in-law. Giulio Mancini commented in his writings that Viola was well-respected for his landscape canvases, which were added to the collections of Cardinal Pietro Aldobrandini, Giustiniani, Cardinal Mazarin, and the Pamphilj. Louis XIV of France bought his landscapes, now in the Louvre. He was the teacher of Bartolommeo Lotto and Pietro Paolo Bonzi (called il Gobbo dei Carracci).

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