GRASSI, Józef

Austrian painter. He was the son of a craftsman from Udine and the brother of the sculptor Anton Grassi (1755-1807). In 1768 he started as a student at the Akademie der Bildenden Künste in Vienna, to which he owed his entire education. His ambitious nature soon ensured that he entered aristocratic circles, where he became a favoured portrait painter, particularly of women, whom he painted in oils and in miniature. His most frequent type was the half-length portrait of young women, generally portrayed with hands crossed on their breast. With pale tones and a liberal use of highlights he achieved a velvety softness of texture and a sentimental atmosphere of dreaminess.

The earliest dated work is a miniature of Princess Helena Radziwill (1784; untraced) known from copies (e.g. Warsaw, National Museum) and engravings to be one of the artist’s most accomplished miniatures. As a rule, however, Grassi left his works unsigned; most of them remained in the collections of the sitters’ families and were frequently copied or repeated by the artist himself. As a result Grassi’s oeuvre can only partially be established, and information regarding individual works is often uncertain. In the 1790s he was active in Poland.