Giuseppe Bernardino Bison
Itinerant Italian fresco and landscape painter
Giuseppe Bernardino Bison was an itinerant Italian painter of frescoes, landscapes, vedute, capriccios and some religious works. He was born in Palmanova. When he was still a boy, his family moved to Brescia, where he saw the works of Girolamo Romani and decided to become a painter. Later, his family moved again, to Venice, where he enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Venezia and worked with Costantino Cedini. While there, he became friends with the architect Gian Antonio Selva, and went with him to Ferrara in 1787 to help decorate the Palazzo Bottoni. Shortly after, he was in Padua, working as a set designer for the Obizzi family and, in 1790, was commissioned to do decorations for the Castello del Catajo. Two years later, he did similar work at the Palazzo Maffetti-Manzoni, then moved to Treviso, where he did frescoes on the ceiling of the Church of Saint Andrew in Volpago del Montello, the oratory of the Villa Bragadin in Ceggia and secular decorations for several villas in Lancenigo [it] and Breda di Piave. From 1798 to 1800, he collaborated with Selva on decorations at the Palazzo Dolfin Manin in Venice. Moving on to Trieste, he collaborated with Matteo Pertsch and the sculptor Antonio Bosa (1780–1845) to provide decorations for the Palazzo Carciotti [it] and the stock exchange building. In 1811, he was in Zara, working at the Palazzo del Governatore. This was followed by decorative work (now lost) at the theaters in Vipacco and Gorizia. At this time, he began to take advantage of a growing market for paintings in the homes of well-to-do non-aristocrats and, working in conjunction with a local art dealer named Tosoni, produced a wide variety of landscapes, vedute and other genres to satisfy local tastes. His canvases were expensive, but also very large. In 1831, despite his successes in Trieste, he began wandering again, returning briefly to Brescia, then settling in Milan where he took some smaller commissions, but was not very successful and died poor.
Artworks by this artist (44 total)
- Design for a Statue of Justice with Sketches at Left and Above
- Venice, the Grand Canal with the Rialto bridge
- The flooding of the Tagliamento river
- Coriolanus before the Women of Rome late 1780s
- Venice, View of Campo Santi Giovanni e Paolo and the Scuola Grande di San Marco
- Monumental Sculpture in a Moonlit Park c. 1842？
- Two Seated Figures with Books mid-18th century
- A Capriccio Fluvial Landscape With Figures In A Boat In The Foreground
- Venice Canal Grande
- View of St. Mark’s Square with the Piazzetta and San Giorgio Maggiore in the background
- Ceiling Study： Allegory of Peace and War c. 1800 ？
- The Molo, with the Palazzo della Zecca and the Biblioteca Marciana, the church of Santa Maria della Salute beyond
- View Of The Grand Canal From The Palazzo Grimani
- The Holy Family
- Venus And Cupid With A Satyr In A Classical Landscape
- Salome with the Head of Saint John the Baptist 1825-1835
- Study figure for a Peasant woman holding a basket and rake
- The Palazzo Ducale and the Riva degli Schiavoni, Venice
- The Bucintoro at the Molo, Venice, on Ascension Day
- Venedig Canal Grande mit Ponte Rialto