Jacopo Amigoni

Jacopo Amigoni belonged to the light, airy world of Venetian Rococo, and he carried it clear across Europe. Trained in the pastel colours and floating figures of early 18th-century Venice, he was a decorator for hire, and courts everywhere wanted the fashionable Italian touch.

He worked for years in Bavaria and then in England, painting mythologies on ceilings and society portraits, before a friendship pulled him further still. The most celebrated singer of the age, the castrato Farinelli, whose voice had captivated London and then the Spanish court, drew Amigoni to Madrid, and he painted his friend more than once.

There he became court painter to the king of Spain and stayed. Amigoni died in Madrid in 1752, far from the Venetian lagoon where he had learned to make ceilings open into pale blue and pink.