Pittori veneti in trasferta. Brevi note per Pietro Brancaleoni, Gaspare Diziani e Michele Marieschi

Drawing on new archival documents, this paper examines the professional travels of several 18th-century Venetian painters. The main focus is on Pietro Brancaleoni, a pupil of Marco Ricci and a specialist in landscapes, whose career intersected with those of his colleagues Gaspare Diziani and Michele Marieschi. Together with the former, Brancaleoni worked in Rome between 1724 and 1725 as a set designer at the Capranica Theatre under the direction of Alessandro Mauro; consequently, there were not one, as previously believed, but two stays by Diziani in the Eternal City, the second of which occurred in 1728 to assist Mauro in the preparation of devotional machines commissioned by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, the celebrated patron of the arts. During a further stopover in Turin, around 1730, Brancaleoni also encountered Marieschi, who at the time, though barely twenty years old, was in the service of the Duke of Savoy; this information is of particular significance, as it represents the earliest attestation of the painter’s work.