Vincenzo Giacomelli
1814–1890 · Italian · Romanticism
The story
Vincenzo Giacomelli trained at the Accademia di Belle Arti in Venice and made his public debut there in the late 1830s. One early work, now in the Gallerie dell'Accademia, shows the Greek hero Diomedes escaping Troy with the Palladium, the sacred statue whose loss was said to doom the city. It is a piece of pure classical storytelling, the kind of subject the Academy still prized.
His own century soon pulled him another way. In 1848, when Venice rose against Austrian rule and declared a short-lived republic, Giacomelli served as an officer in its National Guard during the defence of the city. He went on to paint Risorgimento subjects, among them scenes of Daniele Manin, the lawyer who led that Venetian revolt.
He also spent years in Turin as a painter for the House of Savoy, and later experimented with printing photographs onto canvas. He died in Venice in 1890.
