Tempesta, Antonio

TEMPESTA, ANTONIO. - Painter, b. in Florence in 1555, d. in Rome in 1630. A pupil of Jan van der Straat and of Santi di Tito.

While still very young, he found work at the court of Pope Gregory XIII. He then devoted himself especially to engraving, confirming his gifts as a facile and pleasing, though at times somewhat superficial, narrator of hunting scenes, battles and banquets. T. is in any case a mannerist who already opens the door to the true Baroque with a very refined sense of decoration. Despite his vast pictorial output, there are not many paintings that can today be attributed to him with certainty. Nevertheless, according to general opinion, the most important among the frescoes are those of the Vatican Gallery (today the Gallery of Geographical Maps); the Fame and Honour in the Loggia degli Svizzeri; some decorations in the Palazzo Rospigliosi, at the Quirinal, in the Palazzo Santacroce and Palazzo Giustiniani, in the chapel of St. John the Evangelist in St. John in Fonte, of St. Anthony Abbot at St. John of the Florentines, at St. Stephen Rotondo, at St. Pancras in Rome, and the decorations of the Scala regia of the Palazzo Farnese at Caprarola; then in various galleries. Among the engravings: scenes from the life of St. George; 12 scenes from the life of Alexander the Great; the Metamorphoses of Ovid; countless scenes, worked in collaboration with Bartsch, and the illustration of Tasso's Gerusalemme Liberata with full-page scenes.

Emilia Durini