Bartolomeo Altomonte

1694 – 1783

Austrian painter, son of Martino Altomonte. He was first taught by his father and from 1717 studied in Bologna with Marco Antonio Franceschini, then in Rome with Benedetto Luti and finally in Naples with Francesco Solimena. The sketchbook dated 1718 (Vienna, Albertina) contains only copies after Italian drawings from Luti's collection (now mostly Windsor Castle, Royal Library). Other surviving early studies (Melk, Stiftsmuseum, and Markt St Florian, Stiftssammlung) have a nervous energy that shows the influence of Ricci (also represented in the Luti collection). In 1722 Altomonte returned to Austria to work with his father at St Florian Abbey. As Bartolomeo's work here reveals, it was largely technical expertise that he obtained in Italy, his greater debt being to his father, a representative of the Vienna school of late Baroque fresco painting, closely allied to Roman decorative painting. Bartolomeo's work at St Florian follows in this tradition in that the atmosphere and the elements of colour and light are of crucial importance, while narrative is abjured. Forms are depicted as if viewed from above and not with a vertical perspective. At St Florian, Bartolomeo painted ceiling frescoes in the Dechantzimmer (1722), the Marmorsaal (1722-24), the antechamber (1725), the Kunstkammer (1727), the Sommerrefektorium (1727) and the Tafelzimmer (1732).

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