Mauro Gandolfi

(b Bologna, 18 Sept 1764; d Bologna, 4 Jan 1834). Painter and printmaker, son of (2) Gaetano Gandolfi. He was the eldest of seven children. By his own rather boastful account he ran away from home at the age of 16, joined the French army and returned home to Bologna only in 1786. By 1791 he was enrolled in the school of the Accademia Clementina, as two superb figure drawings dated 1791 and 1792 are among those preserved in the archives of the present Accademia di Belle Arti. His chief mentor was his own father. In 1792 he married Laura Zanetti, and in 1794 he was made a professor of the Accademia Clementina. The fine Self-portrait with a Lute (c. 1794; Bologna, Pin. N.) may have been painted to commemorate this latter occasion. The decade of the 1790s was the most professionally productive time of Mauro's long life. In his manuscript autobiography written in 1833 (Milan, Brera), he listed his oeuvre, all of which he claimed to have done between 1786 and 1796: 1 painted carriage, 6 ceilings, about 28 'quadretti', 20 large drawings, 40 'cappricci disegnati all' inchiostro con diversi colori all' acquarello di for a adattabile a tabacchiere', 8 to 10 miniatures, over 100 'nudi' (drawings?) and the pen drawing of his father (Bologna, Pin. N.).

Part of the Gandolfi family

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