Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole

In Bologna, the painters of the later 17th century worked in the long shadow of Guido Reni, the city's most admired master, who had died in 1642. Of all of them, Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole was the one his contemporaries set closest to Reni, and they called him the Guido moderno, the modern Guido.

He grew up in a painter's house. His father, Antonio Maria dal Sole, painted landscapes and was known as dai Paesi, of the landscapes. The son trained first with Domenico Maria Canuti, a painter of ceilings, and then with Lorenzo Pasinelli, whose refined manner shaped his own. Around 1686 to 1688 he painted ceilings in the Palazzo Mansi in Lucca, among them a Banquet of the Gods, working with Marcantonio Chiarini, a specialist in painted architecture.

According to Giampietro Zanotti, the historian of Bologna's painting academy, he was invited to become court painter to the King of Poland and turned the offer down. He kept his workshop in Bologna, where his pupils included Donato Creti and Lucia Casalini.