Federico
Zandomeneghi
(b Venice, 2 June 1841; d Paris, 30 Dec 1917).
Italian painter. His father Pietro and grandfather Luigi tried to
interest him in the plastic arts, but from a very early age he showed a
stronger inclination for painting. Zandomeneghi soon rebelled against
their teachings, and by 1856 he was attending the Accademia di Belle
Arti in Venice, studying under the painters Michelangelo Grigoletti
(1801–70) and Pompeo Molmenti (1819–94). As a Venetian he was born an
Austrian subject, and, to escape conscription, he fled his city in 1859
and went to Pavia, where he enrolled at the university. In the following
year he followed Garibaldi in the Expedition of the Thousand;
afterwards, having been convicted of desertion and therefore unable to
return to Venice, he went to Florence, where he remained from 1862 to
1866. This period was essential for his artistic development. In Tuscany
he frequented the Florentine painters known as the Macchiaioli, with
some of whom he took part in the Third Italian War of Independence
(1866). Zandomeneghi formed a strong friendship with Telemaco Signorini
and Diego Martelli, with whom he corresponded frequently for the rest of
his life. In this period he painted the Palazzo Pretorio of Florence
(1865; Venice, Ca’ Pesaro), in which the building, represented in the
historical–romantic tradition, is redeemed by a remarkable sense of air
and light, elements derived from the Macchiaioli.
