GALLIARI, Bernardino - b. 1707 Andorno Micca, d. 1794 Andorno Micca

Italian painter, part of a family of painters. He moved to Milan c. 1720, where according to tradition he worked as a craftsman modelling small nativity crib figures, until his talent was discovered by a member of the Clerici family. Little is known about his early development, although it seems likely that he was influenced by Giambattista Tiepolo, who was in Milan in 1730-31, and by Giovanni Battista Crosato. In 1735 Bernardino and his brother Fabrizio decorated the castle of the Visconti family at Brignano Gera d’Adda with trompe l’oeil architecture and landscape. Bernardino painted the figures, his brother the architecture. The figures are executed with long, even brushstrokes and have a clean, almost geometrical appearance. At Brignano he painted the Fall of the Giants, which is almost a replica of the fresco by Giulio Romano in the Palazzo del Tè, Mantua. The style is strongly Baroque, typical of Bernardino’s earlier work.

Bernardino also carried out commissions for stage designs. In 1742 he won a competition for new stage designs at the ducal theatre in Milan, in which the Galli-Bibienas had also competed. The same year he was made stage designer of the Teatro Regio in Turin. Many commissions for sets followed, such as Apollo in his Chariot (1787; Turin, Galleria Sabauda), and he worked in Paris, Chambéry (Savoy) and Vienna.