Full Name: Zanetti, Antonio Maria Alessandro
Other Names:
- Antonio Maria Zanetti "the Younger"
Gender: male
Date Born: 1706
Date Died: 1778
Place Born: Venice, Veneto, Italy
Place Died: Venice, Veneto, Italy
Home Country/ies: Italy
Subject Area(s): Ancient Italian, Early Western World, Mediterranean (Early Western World), painting (visual works), Venetian (Republic, culture or style), and Viennese
Institution(s): Biblioteca Marciana
Overview
Historian of Venetian painting. Zanetti began as a draftsman and artist, collaborating with his cousin, also called Anton Maria Zanetti, in illustrations for books. In 1733 he adapted Marco Boschini pictorial analysis of Venitian painting, Le ricche minere della pittura veneziana, (1674) into a new critical work, his Descrizione di tutte le pubbliche pitture della città di Venezia e isole circonvicine. Emboldened by the success of this early work, he set about writing a large-scale account of the Venetian school, Della pittura veneziana e delle opere pubbliche de’ veneziani maestri (1771). Zanetti conceived of art history through an Enlightenment attitude. Descrizione begins with the “Primitives” of Italian art, moving quickly to the Renaissance artists of Venice. He disparaged Mannerism, contrasting it to Venetian painting, and characterizing the former as leading him to the excesses of the baroque. Zanetti was much admired by later art historians, particularly Luigi Antonio Lanzi who characterized Zanetti’s text balanced and his historiography sound. For most of his life, from 1737 onward, he was librarian of the Biblioteca Marciana, the library of S Marco in Venice.
Selected Bibliography
Della pittura Veneziana e delle opere pubbliche de’ Veneziani Maestri libri V. Venice: S. Benedetto, 1771; Descrizione di tutte le pubbliche pitture della città di Venezia. Venice: Presso P. Bassaglia, 1733.
Sources
The Dictionary of Art
Contributors: Lee Sorensen