GANDOLFI, FAMILY. — Bolognese painters. During the second half of the eighteenth century and thereafter, the brothers Ubaldo and Gaetano G., followed by Mauro, Gaetano’s son, carried out an unusual artistic activity in their homeland, in which Venetian motifs and accents, especially Tiepolesque ones, were pleasantly grafted onto the remnants of the local Baroque tradition, followed finally by the influence of international Neoclassicism.
UBALDO, born at S. Matteo della Decima, near Bologna, on 28 April 1728, and died at Ravenna on 21 July 1781, combined a fluid painterly technique and warm tonalities, especially in his easel works, with a highly varied and abundant activity as a draughtsman; moreover, he modelled in plaster the two prophets Isaiah and Jeremiah for the Bolognese church of S. Giuliano. Particularly worthy of appreciation are the canvas Diana and Endymion, in the Palazzo comunale of Bologna, and several female and child heads in private collections.
GAETANO, born at S. Matteo della Decima on 31 August 1734, and died at Bologna on 21 June 1802, was initiated into art by his elder brother. His manner is at times confused with that of Ubaldo, whom he falls somewhat short of in the quality of touch and colouring, though not in narrative invention. In addition to numerous frescoes and paintings on canvas, he left drawings of considerable merit and about twenty engravings executed with the burin. Among his paintings are remembered, besides six frescoes in the cupola of S. Maria della Vita in Bologna, a Portrait of his Wife, in the Pinacoteca of Bologna, the Rape of Delonira, in the Bolognese Calzoni palace, and the painting depicting The Founding of the Ospedale dei Trocatelli, in the Museo civico of Pisa.
MAURO, born at Bologna on 18 September 1764 and died there on 4 January 1833, earned recognition as a painter with the Self-Portrait in the Pinacoteca of Bologna, but was above all an engraver with the burin, adopting the French technique au pointillé and achieving success in France and the United States, as well as in the most important Italian cities.