Venus and Adonis

mythological

Born in Naples but trained as an artist in Venice, Jacopo Amigoni soon began working in the Rococo style. Like Sebastiano Ricci and Pellegrino he often left Venice to work as one of Europe's foremost cosmopolitan artists, fixing the evanescent rather fragile delicacy of his style in great frescoes and paintings of historical subjects both profane and sacred. Charmingly Rococo in taste are the small canvases too, usually with some mythological or courtly subject.

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About the Artist

Jacopo Amigoni

1682 – 1752

Jacopo Amigoni (Amiconi) was a Venetian history and portrait painter who worked all over Europe in a more or less international style, the Venetian Rococo, with elements compounded from Sebastiano Ricci and French Rococo, and, later, Tiepolo. He worked for some years for the Elector of Bavaria and then came to London in 1730, where he painted several decorative cycles (e.g. Rickmansworth, near London, Moor Park Golf Club) and portraits; though these, according to Vertue, were 'not his inclination - nor Talent'. In 1739 he returned to Venice with a small fortune, and it was he who persuaded Canaletto to visit London (1746). In 1747 he went to Madrid as Court painter: Vertue records that news of his death there reached London just as his finest works - in St James's Square - were destroyed. The altarpiece of Emmanuel Collection, Cambridge, is his; other works are in Darmstadt, London, Madrid, Venice and York.

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