Antonio Rotta

Antonio Rotta made his living painting the small dramas of poor Venice. Born in 1828 in Gorizia, then a town of the Austrian Empire, he trained at the Venice Academy and settled in the city for good, turning out warm, closely observed scenes of cobblers at their benches, old men, and children at play or at work.

These pictures sold. His best-known one shows a shoemaker bent over his last, and collectors across Europe and America bought his genre scenes eagerly. He took a medal at the Paris Salon in 1878 and showed at the Vienna World's Fair of 1873. His son Silvio also became a painter of Venetian life, carrying the family trade into the next generation.