VIANI, Antonio Maria - b. ~1555 Cremona, d. ~1635 Mantova

Italian painter and architect, also called Vianino. He was a pupil of Giulio Campi. Viani moved to Munich in 1586 to work at the court of William V, Duke of Bavaria (reg 1579-98), where he participated in the decoration of the Residenz (the Antiquarium and the Grottenhof) under the guidance of Friedrich Sustris.

Called to Mantua in 1592, he became court painter to Duke Vincenzo I Gonzaga. His paintings are preserved in Mantua, in Sant’Andrea and in the Palazzo Ducale.

As an architect, he partly reworked and decorated the Palazzo Ducale in Mantua (around 1600), built, on the design of Leon Battista Alberti, the transept of Sant’Andrea, as well as the choir and the crypt (1597-1600), built the Villa Ducale in Maderno, Lake Garda (1603), the church and convent of St. Ursula (1608).

Offering of the Old Testament

In the last quarter of the sixteenth century Munich was the most important bastion of the Counter Reformation beyond the Alps. It was in Munich that a representative Jesuit church, St. Michael’s, was built on German soil. Work on both the interior and the exterior, modelled on Il Gesù in Rome, was carried out by an international group of artists, who in addition to the Italians, were all Netherlandish and German masters trained in Italy.

Friedrich Sustris won the commission to design the altars of the church. The painting on the high altar was executed by Christoph Schwarz based on a drawing by Sustris. The two panels depicting the sacrificial offerings of the Old and New Testaments, one on each wing of the transept were executed by one of Sustris’s colleagues, Antonio Maria Viani.