Domenico Pellegrini
1759–1840 · Italian · Neoclassicism
The story
Domenico Pellegrini made his living with a passport. Born in 1759 in the small Veneto town of Galliera Veneta, he trained as a portrait painter and then spent decades moving between the capitals of Europe, working in Rome, Venice, Paris, Naples, London and Lisbon.
He reached London in 1792, drawn there by his countryman Francesco Bartolozzi, an engraver famous across England, and joined the Royal Academy schools. He exhibited in the city until 1812 and settled for long stretches in Lisbon, where in the 1810s he painted the Duke of Wellington in Portuguese uniform, the Tower of Belém behind him and the names of Peninsular War battles set beside the figure.
He came back to Rome at the end of his life and died there in 1840.
