NEGRI, Pietro

Italian painter, active in Venice. His first teacher of painting was Matteo Ponzone (1583-after 1663); later he was a pupil of Francesco Ruschi, along with Antonio Zanchi, Francesco Rosa (1635-1710) and Federico Cervelli.

In his early days he was stylistically very close to Antonio Zanchi, later he followed the Genoese Giambattista Langetti, then in the mid-seventeenth century the dramatic style of Luca Giordano.

Paintings attributed with certainty to Pietro Negri are from the early 1660s. A painting by Anthony and Cleopatra is dated 1664, followed by a Venus Mourning the Death of Adonis, Semiramis Receiving the News of the Insurrection in Babylon, and a Venus and Cupid. In 1670 he painted the Tree Seraphic of the Three Franciscan Orders, preserved in Venice in the church of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari.

In 1673 Negri executed his masterpiece, the large canvas (a telero) with Sts Roch and Mark Interceding with the Virgin for the End of the Plague in Venice, along the left wall of the second flight of stairs of the Scuola Grande di San Rocco.

His late works are the Lamentation of the Dead Christ in the church of Santa Maria Formosa, the Good Samaritan in a private collection in Udine, Salome Receives the Head of John the Baptist in a private collection, and The Truth and Time in the Museo Civico, Asolo.

He married Franceschina Maria Barbara, and had two children, baptized in 1670 and 1671. Widowed, he contracted a second marriage in 1673 with Caroli Angela, the widow of a merchant.

The painter Simone Brentana (1656-1742) was his pupil.

The Madonna Saves Venice from the Plague of 1630

Pietro Negri was a Venetian painter, the pupil of Antonio Zanchi.

This is a detail of a huge painting which was begun by Antonio Zanchi and finished by Pietro Negri. The painting remembers the terrible plague of 1630 in Venice. The miraculous apparition of the Virgin, through St Mark’s intercession, takes place against the steaming background of Venice where the Basilica della Salute can be seen. The Basilica, begun in 1631 as votive thanks for the end of the plague, was only completed in 1687 but by 1673 the most fundamental parts had been finished.

The Madonna Saves Venice from the Plague of 1630

Vanitas