Giovanni Battista Vanni

Annunciazione (Annunciation) by Giovanni Battista Vanni, Church of San Francesco di Paola at Florence.

Apostle and four angels: from a set of 15 etchings (1642) by Giovanni Battista Vanni; based on Correggio's fresco in Parma Cathedral

Biography

Giovanni Battista Vanni was born in either Pisa or Florence around 1599; he studied successively under Jacopo da Empoli, Aurelio Lomi, and Matteo Rosselli, and then became a disciple of Cristofano Allori. He is better known as an engraver than as a painter. From 1624 to 1632, he lived in Rome, then returning to Florence after visiting Venice.

In 1642, he etched a series of fifteen plates from Correggio's frescoes from the cupola of the Parma Cathedral, depicting the Assumption of the Virgin (1526-30). He also engraved Paolo Veronese's Marriage at Cana. His works include a Triumph of David, now in the palace of the Alberti in Prato, an Annunciation for the church of San Francesco di Paola in Florence and a Saint Sebastian Healed at the Feet of the Virgin for the church of San Giovanni dei Fiorentini in Rome. He frescoed a Meal in the house of the Pharisee for a refectory attached to the Church of Santa Maria del Carmine, Florence.

He died at Florence in 1660.

Sources

• Bryan, Michael (1889). Walter Armstrong & Robert Edmund Graves (ed.). Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical (Volume II L-Z). York St. No. 4, Covent Garden, London; Original from Fogg Library, Digitized May 18, 2007: George Bell and Sons. p. 633.CS1 maint: location (link)