Francesco Battaglioli

Francesco Battaglioli painted views. He specialised in the veduta, the Venetian taste for real and invented cityscapes, palace courtyards and stage-like piazzas. Born in Modena around 1725, he settled in Venice, joined its painters' guild, and later taught perspective at its Academy of Fine Arts.

In 1754 an unusual summons took him abroad. Farinelli, the celebrated castrato singer who by then effectively ran the court entertainments in Madrid, called him to Spain to design scenery for the royal opera houses of King Ferdinand VI at Buen Retiro and Aranjuez. Between the stage sets he painted the king and his queen, Barbara of Braganza, strolling in the gardens of Aranjuez, canvases that survive today. When Ferdinand died in 1759 his successor Charles III had little use for opera, and Battaglioli went home to Venice, where he died in 1796.