Federiko Benković

Federico Bencovich signed himself a Venetian, but his contemporaries called him il Dalmatino, the Dalmatian, after the eastern Adriatic coast he came from. Born around 1677, he trained in Bologna, far from Venice, under the painter Carlo Cignani, and helped fresco a cathedral dome at Forlì before moving back north.

His pictures are dark, emotional and a little strange, with figures that seem to strain against the shadow. That manner fed two far more famous painters: the young Giovanni Battista Piazzetta and Giambattista Tiepolo both drew on his brooding light, and for years some of his chalk studies of nudes hung under Piazzetta's name.

Bencovich spent his last working decade as court painter to the prince-bishop of Mainz in Germany, then retired to Gorizia, near today's Slovenian border, where he died in 1753. His reputation faded almost completely and was recovered only by scholars in the early 20th century.