- NameAlessandro Gherardini
- Activity/Titlepainter
- Sexmale
- Variant namesAlessandro Gherardini
- Nationality/DatesItalian, born 1655-11-16, dead 1723
- PlacesPlace of birth: Florens, Italien
Place of death: Italien
BiographyGherardini, Alessandro
(b Florence, 16 Nov 1655; d Livorno, 1723).
Italian painter. He was a pupil of Alessandro Rosi (1627–1707), who had trained with Cesare Dandini and was influenced by Pietro da Cortona. Around 1675 he went to Pontremoli, a Tuscan city, the art of which was closer to that of the neighbouring regions of Emilia and Liguria. There Gherardini painted a Transfiguration (Pontremoli, S Cristina) and a fresco in Palazzo Negri of Samson Destroying the Temple (destr.). He travelled extensively in northern Italy, spending a period in Parma, where he worked in the Charterhouse. By 1688 he was back in Florence, where, for Grand Prince Ferdinand de’ Medici, he decorated a chapel in the Palazzo Pitti and a ceiling with the Assumption in the Villa Medici at Castello. The Discovery of Moses (Bamberg, Neue Residenz, Staatsgal.) and Solomon and Sheba (Schleissheim, nr Munich, Neues Schloss) probably date from the same period. They reveal a knowledge of Venetian painting, especially the work of Veronese, but this influence was soon replaced by that of Luca Giordano, who during Gherardini’s absence had carried out some important works in Florence, including the decoration of the cupola of the chapel of S Andrea Corsini in S Maria del Carmine and of the gallery of the Palazzo Medici (now the prefettura). Giordano’s influence is apparent in Gherardini’s first public work in Florence, the Triumph of Faith on the vault of S Jacopo tra i Fossi (drawing, Vienna, Albertina), as well as in his works in Pontremoli of this period, the Miracle of St Nicholas of Bari (1689; Pontremoli, Pal. Dosi; drawing, Parma, Bib. Palatina) and two allegories in the Villa Dosi at Chiosi of the Theological Virtues and the so-called Allegory of War. [Läs mer i Oxford Art Online]