Giovanni Antonio Burrini (25 April 1656 – 5 January 1727) was a Bolognese painter of Late-Baroque or Rococo style. He was one of the founding members of the Accademia Clementina in Bologna. Burrini was a rival and competitor of Sebastiano Ricci.
After an apprenticeship with Domenico Maria Canuti, he went to work under Lorenzo Pasinelli with fellow student, Giovanni Gioseffo dal Sole. He became an early friend and often close collaborator with Giuseppe Maria Crespi, with whom he shared a studio. Burrini received generous help from his patron, Giulio Cesare Venenti, himself an amateur engraver, who supported these studies for several years and also offered his protégé lodging in his residence. Around 1672, he visited Venice, where he studied the paintings of Titian and Paolo Veronese.
Burrini began as a fresco decorator; he usually collaborated with a quadratura specialist, and his earliest work of this type, a frieze of small wall paintings in the Casa Marchesini, Bologna, was carried out with the assistance of the quadraturista Marcantonio Chiarini. Among his earliest known works are his most brilliant surviving frescoes: the ceiling decorations (1681âÂÂ4) for six rooms in the Villa Albergati at Zola Predosa, near Bologna, again with quadratura settings by Chiarini. These frescoes show mythological scenes, including the Fall of the Giants, and are distinguished by their bold and brilliant Baroque illusionism and rich colouring.
In 1688 Burrini decorated the Franchi Chapel in the Bolognese church of San Giorgio in Poggiale and in the same year, on the invitation of Emmanuel Philibert, Prince of Carignano, went to Turin accompanied by the quadraturista Tommaso Aldrovandini, though nothing now remains of their work there.
BurriniâÂÂs paintings of the late 1680s and early 1690s are extraordinarily free and spontaneous in execution and markedly Venetian in style. They show a variety of subjects from biblical history, such as Susanna and the Elders (c. 1686âÂÂ90; Paris, priv. col.), and scenes from mythology and epic poetry, such as Erminia and the Shepherds (c. 1686âÂÂ90; Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna) and Diana and Endymion (c. 1690; York Art Gallery). The Erminia and a Bacchus and Ariadne (early 1690s; priv. col.) have landscape settings loosely brushed with liquid impastos that reveal BurriniâÂÂs unusual capacity in this regard. In the Landscape with St. Jerome, where a small figure of St. Jerome is seen in a vast landscape panorama, he developed the landscape more extensively. Zanotti noted that this picture was inspired by TitianâÂÂs St. Jerome (Paris, Louvre).
Burrini also executed zestful oil sketches of heads in genre-like groupings, such as the Genre Scene (Pinacoteca Nazionale di Bologna). In 1690, with Chiarini, Burrini executed huge wall paintings and a ceiling painting in the salone of the Palazzo Pini Alamandini, Bologna, with scenes from the Myth of Phaeton and representations of the Continents and the Elements. These are less daring and less Baroque than his earlier frescoes, and closer to the Bolognese classical tradition.
The period 1680âÂÂ95 was the most felicitous and productive of BurriniâÂÂs career. In 1696, at the age of 40, he married and was thereafter weighed down with the responsibility of a large family. Zanotti, who knew him well, said that this caused him to paint with less thought. He was further demoralized by his estrangement from his daughter Barbara, whom he had taught to be a painter. Letters survive that pathetically reflect this dissension in the artistâÂÂs family (Bologna, Biblioteca comunale dell'Archiginnasio, Autografi XI no. 3424).
ZanottiâÂÂs assertions about BurriniâÂÂs decline are unverifiable as little survives of the artistâÂÂs later work. His Martyrdom of St. Catherine (Bologna, Santa Caterina di Saragozza), however, is a vigorous work, described as âÂÂuna delle ultime opereâ in Malvasia/Zanotti Le pitture di Bologna (1732). Burrini was among the artists who founded the Accademia Clementina in Bologna in 1709. He took an active part in its affairs and was its seventh director (1723âÂÂ4). Among his pupils was Bartolomeo Mercati.