Boschetto&Boschetto presents: life and work of Giambattista Piranesi, venetian artist and milestone of Italian architecture.

For those who are at least interested in architecture, Giovanni Battista Piranesi won’t be an unknown name: he has been an engraver, a scholar, an architecture theorist, a prominent figure of Neoclassicism and a pioneer of Romanticism. More important, he has been one of the greatest stucco artists that ever existed.

Born in Mogliano Veneto in 1720, Giovani grew in a family of artists and intellectuals. He was introduced to literature from his brother Angelo and later he started his career of engineer and architect in Venice with his uncle Matteo.
Spending his early years as an architecture scholar in Venice and Rome, he improved his painting tecnique, then he imposed himself as engraver.

Piranesi’s greatest architecture work was the restoration of the church of Santa Maria del Priorato, in Rome: Piranesi created here one of the most refined and erudite stucco decorations of those times.

The outside of the building evoke the structure of the Roman temple; the inside recalls the taste of Piranesi’s time, mixing Baroque and Neoclassicism. Piranesi’s iconography can also be seen in the whole complex surrounding the church, where we can find symbols such as the ship, the cross, the snake, as well as military weapons and effiges that refer to the the Order of Malta.

Giambattista Piranesi died in 1778 and was buried in the church of Santa Maria del Priorato. The influence of his work on art and architecture are, as of today, still undisputed.

Boschetto&Boschetto presents: stucco art by Antonio Giuseppe Bossi, a plasterer from the Eighteenth Century whose fame lives on in Italy and Germany.

Antonio Giuseppe Bossi was born in Lugano (Switzerland) somewhen at the beginning of the Eighteenth Century. We don’t know much about his youth: his first recorded work, in the 1727, was the decoration of the Abbey of Memmingen, in Germany.

It is in the German city of Würzburg that Bossi’s fame begins: tha artist was involved in the decoration of the Schönborn side chapel inside the city’s cathedral. The skill and the talent shown by the young artist gained him the attention of Prince Friedrich Carl von Schönborn, which elected him “royal plasterer”. Bossi had then the chance to meet the famed venetian painter Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

Antonio Giuseppe Bossi’s stuccos put together elements from Nordic art and from Italian decoration. Each work was based on preparatory drawings made with coal; also hw used mobile scaffoldings and created decorations and plaster capitals through plaster pourings.

In spite of the many commissions he had in his long career, his fame of legendary artist is due to the decoration of Würzburg Residence, which took the main part of his time and made him one of the great names of German Rococò.

As well as other great artists from the past, Antonio Giuseppe Bossi was celebrated in his time, rather then as an artist, as the manager of an artisan enterprise: a demonstration of the tight connection between art and crasftmanship.

Boschetto&Boschetto presents: life and art of Giacomo Serpotta, artist and artisan of the Seventeenth century and one of the most acclaimed Baroque plasterer in Europe.

Nobody doubted that Giacomo Serpotta would have become a sculptor, but nobody thought he would have become one of the greatest. Born in 1656 in Palermo, Giacomo learnt the ways of art and craftmanship of his own family: he and his brother Giuseppe soon began the apprenticeship in their father’s workshop, which was a renowned marble sculptor. His father Gaspare, however, died before accomplishing their education, leaving Giacomo e Giuseppe to finish their training in other workshops.

That was the beginning of their fortune. Marble was a very expensive material, stucco was quite cheaper and there was no lack of commissions. Only 21 years old, Giacomo Serpotta was already considere one of the best stucco artists in the business: his first work, in 1677, was the decoration of the church of Madonna dell’Itria in Monreale. In the next 50 years, the name of Giacomo Serpotta spread wide, making of him one of the main charachters of the Baroque revolution that changed the face of Southern Italy.

Serpotta’s stucco decorations became highly appreciated and requested. His style distinguished for the refinement and expressiveness, and combined all the best from Classical and Baroque. Soon, people started to call him “Magister Stuccator”, or “Master of stucco work”.

Giacomo Serpotta’s fame of plasterer and artist is alive and well, and his works can be seen in many churches and buildings, especially in Sicily.