Francesco Maggiotto

The name Maggiotto was a nickname the family carried. Francesco's father, Domenico Fedeli, was known as "il Maggiotto", and the son took the name too, learning to paint at his father's side in Venice. Domenico had been a favourite pupil of Giovanni Battista Piazzetta, so young Francesco grew up inside one of the city's living painting traditions.

He looked to the great Venetians of his century, Piazzetta, Giambattista Tiepolo and Giovanni Battista Pittoni, and worked in their warm light. In 1769 he painted an allegory of Painting and Nature and presented it to the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts. It still hangs in the Gallerie dell'Accademia. Two years later the same academy made him a master of painting, and that post carried him into the final decades of the Republic of Venice, which fell in 1797.