ALBERTI, Giovanni

Italian painter, part of a family of artists, brother of Cherubino and Alessandro Alberti. He distinguished himself as an expert in perspective design, for which he was praised by Ignazio Danti (1536-1586), Federico Zuccaro and Giovanni Baglione. He is thus usually credited with the design of the architectural perspectives in the fresco decorations he painted in collaboration with his brothers. He also painted putti and ornamental figures. He assisted Danti in the Sala dei Palafrenieri and Sala Vecchia degli Svizzeri in the Vatican (after February 1582) and was influenced by Danti’s belief that perspective decorations should be oriented for the most typical viewing point of the spectator.

In 1586 he went to Sabbioneta (near Mantua) to assist his brother Alessandro at the Palazzo Ducale and painted the fictive colonnades on the end walls of the Galleria degli Antichi. This trip gave him the opportunity to study the illusionistic frescoes of Andrea Mantegna in Mantua and of Correggio in Parma.

He went to Rome during the papacy of Gregory XIII, who employed him in the papal palace on Monte Cavallo, and in the Vatican. He excelled in painting landscapes and perspective, in which the figures were usually painted by Cherubino. He was also employed by Clement VIII, to paint the sacristy of St John of Lateran, and, in conjunction with his brothers, to decorate the Sala Clementina in the Vatican. For this work, which was commenced in 1595 and completed in 1598, the two painters (Alessandro had died during the course of execution) received 3050 scudi. In the 1590s Giovanni and Cherubino painted frescoes in the Capella Maggiore of San Silvestro al Quirinale, where the complex perspectival effects include a trompe-l’oeil oculus above the altar.