Giovanni “Nino” Costa
He was born in Rome in 1826 and educated at the College of Montefiascone before learning the rudiments of drawing at Bandinelli College in 1843-45.
When not yet 20 he began studying art under Camuccini, and later under Coghetti and Massabò.
In 1848 he attended the school of Potesti before leaving for political reasons.
He also studied under Chierici, whose colorism he admired.
In 1849, he became politically active, fighting in defense of Vicenza and Rome.
As his artistic career began, he met German Nazarene painters like Cornelius and Overbeck (link to the Nazarenes), Romantic landscape painters like the French David who taught him about landscape trends in France, Drever, and especially the British G. Mason and F. Leighton.
Spurred by David, he made his first plein-air works in Tivoli, Porto d’Anzio, and Ariccia from 1850 to 1853.
Costa was in and around Naples many times, engaging with the Neapolitan landscape paintings that clearly influenced the drawings in an unpublished notebook that are now in a private collection (1850-51).
He also made plein-air studies in Ceri, Frascati, Bracciano, and other places in Lazio in 1852-53.
In 1855 he was with Mason in Ardea making studies for his painting Le ladre di legna (The Wood Thieves). In 1862 he painted Donne sulla spiaggia di Anzio (Women on Anzio Beach), which he brought to the 1862 Paris Salon.
Around 1853 he painted Danza sopra una carbonaia estinta (Dance Over an Extinguished Charcoal Pile), Il mare (the sea), Il Circeo (Circeo), and Le paludi pontine (The Pontine Marshes).
In 1860 he moved to Florence where he opened a studio during an exciting artistic moment in that city. He was quickly recognized and appreciated by the painters at Caffè Michelangiolo and remained close with the Tuscan group personally and artistically.
In 1863 he moved to Paris where he deepened his knowledge of painters from the 1830s like Corot who admired and encouraged his work.
In Fontainebleau, he painted Ninfa nel bosco (Nymph in the Woods), now in the Gallery of Modern Art in Rome.
He died in Marina di Pisa in 1903.
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