FALDONI Giovanni Antonio
(Asolo 1689 – Rome 1770)
Engraver and Italian painter son of the painter Girolamo and Maria Compagnoni. He was particularly active in Venice where he settled, perhaps on suggestion of his father, after some trips in Italy and a stay in Paris. He was a pupil of landscape painter Antonio Luciani and among the first to introduce into engraving the technique of parallel cuts that he had derived from Claude Mellan’s prints.
He was a skilled swordsman with violent nature. He has been involved in numerous brawls and he also has been in jail at least twice (quarrel with the painter Bartolomeo Nazari, 1731; insults and threats to his pupil and painter Marco Pitteri, 1737). In the years 1724-26, Faldoni etched 11 copper-plates for Anton Maria Zanetti, including The Adoration of Shepherds, derived from a Parmigianino’s drawing owned by Zanetti himself.
He contributed to the illustrations of Zanetti ‘s cousins work ‘Delle antiche statue greche e romane che nell’antisala della libreria di S. Marco e in altri luoghi pubblici di Venezia si trovano’. He engraved plates for the volume on the antique museum of Francesco Trevisan before the latter became bishop of Verona.
He applied himself to portraits of venetian Doges, prosecutors, cardinals and nobles using a kind of French decorative ornament, through which he managed to give a personal impression to his works. This is the reason why he can be considered one of the most interesting engravers of the 18th century in Venice. He made etchings from subjects by Pietro da Cortona, Sebastiano Ricci, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, Pietro Longhi and other Venetian painters.