Giovanni Carnovali
(1804 - 1873)

 

Giovanni Carnovali known as Il Piccio ('the little one'), was an Italian painter.
Carnovali was born in Montegrino Valtravaglia (Varese). In 1815, at the age of just 11, he was admitted to the Carrara Academy in Bergamo under the guidance of the director Giuseppe Diotti, who immediately recognised his young pupil's natural talent. The artist soon began to break away from the strict Neoclassicism of his academic training and return to the figurative tradition of the 16th and 17th century, which he interpreted with great expressive freedom, especially in portrait painting. His debut at the exhibition of the Carrara Academy and his first major public commission for a work on a religious subject came in 1826. After the first short trips for study purposes, made on foot in the second half of the 1820s, he travelled as far as Rome in 1831 and stopped in Parma on the way back.

 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giovanni_Carnovali

Self-portrait Giovanni Carnovali (called "il Piccio")
circa 1846-1850
height: 78 x 58 cm
Accademia Carrara, Bergamo, Italy
https://www.lombardiabeniculturali.it/opere-arte/schede/C0050-00896/

 

 Portrait of Pietro Ronzoni
Posted July the 19th