Teodoro Matteini
1754–1831 · Italian · Neoclassicism
The story
Teodoro Matteini was born in Pistoia in 1754 and made his name in Rome, in the studio of Pompeo Batoni, the most sought-after portraitist in the city and a painter of English aristocrats on their Grand Tour. From Batoni he took a taste for small full-length portraits, with the sitter set among trees and open landscape.
In 1798 Matteini settled in Venice and moved into teaching. At the Accademia there he ran the drawing class, and among his students was the young Francesco Hayez, who would become the leading Italian painter of the next generation.
His portraits in the Gallerie dell'Accademia keep that quiet, Arcadian mood: young women with a sheet of music or a medallion, posed gently against soft backgrounds. He held the chair of painting in Venice until his death in 1831.
