Giuseppe Bernardino Bison

Italian vedute painter of the 18th century, Giuseppe Bernardino Bison was also an important decorative painter. He executed paintings for a great number of palaces and created stage designs for theatres and operas. Giuseppe Bernardino Bison received his artistic training in the Academy of Venice where he studied with Anton Maria Zanetti and with the set designer Anton Maurei. The architect Gian Antonio Selva employed him in 1782 as a painter working on the decorations of Domenico Bottoni’s palace in Ferrara. Thus began Bison’s long career as a decorative painter, one that took him to Treviso, Padua, and Venice to fulfil private and public commissions. Giuseppe Bernardino Bison lived between 1800 and 1831 in Trieste where he received many prestigious commissions including the decoration of the Sala Rotonda of the Carciotti Palace and the ceiling of the new Stock Exchange. In 1831, Bison moved to Milan where he exhibited at the Academia di Brera and produced stage designs for the theater La Scala. Alongside his career as a decorative painter, Bison painted small scale landscape vedute that were greatly admired by travellers on the Grand Tour.