MICHELE MARIESCHI
Born on 21 December 1710 in the parish of San
Marcuola, he was the son of Antonio Marieschi, a modestly-talented sculptor who would die when the boy was 11 years old. Thereafter, Michele learnt the rudiments of his art from his maternal grandfather, Antonio Meneghini, an artist who worked
as a set painter. However, his real teacher would be Gaspare Diziani, who at the time was also working as a set painter in the workshop of Francesco Tasso.
The first references to Marieschi’s work regard drawings produced for Tasso: designs for the temporary fittings raised in the Fano church of San Paterniano for the funeral of Maria Clementina Sobieski in 1735. It is likely that around the same
period Michele also began working as a painter in his own right, producing the large celebratory work The Entrance of Patriarch Antonio Correr into Venice, which records a ceremonial event that had taken place on 17 February that very year; the work is now in a private collection.
It is not easy to chart subsequent events in the artist’s brief career. Documents record that in 1736 he would paint a View of the Doge’s Palace looking towards the Basilica for Maresciallo Mathias von Schulenburg.
For the same patron, he would paint a View of the Rialto the following year, and two more works in 1740. In the meantime, in 1737, Michele had married Angelo Fontana, the daughter of the most important picture-dealer in Venice.
He would then supply his father-in-law’s shop in San Luca with a large number of precisely-detailed views of the city and fascinating imaginary landscape scenes.
Most of these were intended for the foreigners who at the time were flocking to Venice as part of the Grand Tour.
Curiously enough, Marieschi worked only on the perspective layout, architectural structures and landscape composition of his paintings, leaving the figures to other specialists, who have been variously identified as Diziani, Francesco Simonini, Francesco Fontebasso and Antonio Guardi; Michele had met the latter in the period when he was working for Schulenburg.
After the painter’s untimely death at the age of only 33 years old (on 18 January 1743), his studio would be taken over by his pupil Francesco Albotto, who in 1744 would also marry Marieschi’s widow.