Michelangelo Maestri was an Italian artist of the 18th century who died in Rome in 1812. His finest compositions are based on motifs from antique frescos discovered in

Pompeii Pompeii ( ; ) was a city in what is now the municipality of Pompei, near Naples, in the Campania region of Italy. Along with Herculaneum, Stabiae, and Villa Boscoreale, many surrounding villas, the city was buried under of volcanic ash and p ...

and

Herculaneum Herculaneum is an ancient Rome, ancient Roman town located in the modern-day ''comune'' of Ercolano, Campania, Italy. Herculaneum was buried under a massive pyroclastic flow in the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in 79 AD. Like the nearby city of ...

and from designs by

Raphael Raffaello Sanzio da Urbino (; March 28 or April 6, 1483April 6, 1520), now generally known in English as Raphael ( , ), was an Italian painter and architect of the High Renaissance. List of paintings by Raphael, His work is admired for its cl ...

or his pupil

Giulio Romano Giulio Pippi ( – 1 November 1546), known as Giulio Romano and Jules Romain ( , ; ), was an Italian Renaissance painter and architect. He was a pupil of Raphael, and his stylistic deviations from High Renaissance classicism help define the ...

. His work became very popular and often purchased by European travelers during their Grand Tour. Some of his most famous gouaches portray Cupid in the form of a

putto A putto (; plural putti ) is a figure in a work of art depicted as a chubby male child, usually naked and very often winged. Originally limited to profane passions in symbolism,Dempsey, Charles. ''Inventing the Renaissance Putto''. University ...

in a chariot being drawn by various animals. These were inspired by ceiling frescoes in the salone of

Villa Lante Villa Lante is a Mannerism, Mannerist garden of surprise in Bagnaia, Viterbo, Bagnaia, Viterbo, central Italy, attributed to Jacopo Barozzi da Vignola. Villa Lante did not become well known until it passed to Ippolito Lante Montefeltro della Rov ...

, on the

Janiculum The Janiculum (; ), occasionally known as the Janiculan Hill, is a hill in western Rome, Italy. Although it is the second-tallest hill (the tallest being Monte Mario) in the contemporary city of Rome, the Janiculum does not figure among the pro ...

Hill in Rome.

Francesco Piranesi Francesco Piranesi (; 1758/59 – 23 January 1810) was an Italian engraver, etcher and architect. He was the son of the more famous Giovanni Battista Piranesi and continued his series of engravings representing monuments and ancient temples. ...

and Tommaso Piroli published these frescoes in a series of engravings in 1805 and attributed each drawing to

. Maestri probably knew the engravings as his inscriptions beneath the framing lines (describing the different types of love) are similar to those reported by Piranesi and Piroli.

References

*M. Natale, Musée d'art et d'histoire Genève, Peintures italiennes du XIVe au XVIIIe siècle, Geneva, 1979, p. 569-570. *T. Carunichio, Villa Lante al Gianicolo: storia della fabbrica e cronaca degli abitatori, Rome, 2005, figs. 112–4, 118–9.

External links

''Michelangelo Maestri'' British Museum
18th-century Italian painters Italian male painters 19th-century Italian painters 1812 deaths Year of birth missing 19th-century Italian male artists 18th-century Italian male artists {{Italy-painter-stub