HAYEZ, FRANCESCO. - Painter, b. in Venezia on 11 February 1791, d. in Milano on 11 February 1882. A pupil of Lattanzio Quarena and, at the Academy, of Teodoro Matteini, he won in 1809 the competition for the Rome scholarship; there he met Canova, who greatly encouraged and protected him. Having won in 1812 the grand prize of the Accademia di Brera with his neoclassical Laocoön, H. remained in Rome for more than five years, training himself not only on ancient works but also on the paintings of Ingres and Camuccini.
Having returned to Venezia in 1821, he went to Milano, attracted by its extraordinarily lively artistic milieu. In Milano he initially painted several historical pictures in the Palazzo reale, but was soon called to teach at the Accademia di Brera. Having initially turned in the Roman milieu towards neoclassicism, which benefited him above all as a technical discipline, he subsequently devoted himself to paintings of historical subject, executed with the intentions and sensibility of a Romantic (Vespri siciliani, Galleria d'arte moderna di Roma; Ultima addio di Giulietta a Romeo, Galleria d'arte moderna di Milano), and above all to portraits, a field in which he truly excelled through his most acute sensitivity as an interpreter, technical mastery, and exquisite colour. The portrait of Rossini, that of Alessandro Manzoni, and that of Signora Iuva, all in Milano, divided between the Gallerie di Brera and the Galleria d'arte moderna, as well as that of the Principessa di S. Antimo in the Museo di S. Martino in Napoli, are undoubtedly among the finest paintings of the nineteenth century.