Donato Creti

Donato Creti painted cool, elegant pictures with slender figures, crisp drawing and pale, silvery colour. His work stands apart from the heavy Baroque of his time and looks forward to Neoclassicism. His mythological scenes have a quiet, almost frozen grace.

He was born in Cremona in 1671 and grew up in Bologna, where he trained under Lorenzo Pasinelli and worked for the rest of his life. He is best known for eight small paintings of Astronomical Observations, commissioned in 1711 and now in the Vatican, showing tiny figures studying the sun, moon and planets through telescopes under night skies. He was a founding member of Bologna’s Accademia Clementina and served as its head.

Achilles Handed over to Chiron and Mercury and Paris show his refined, restrained approach. Look at the long limbs and the calm, balanced poses. He died in Bologna in 1749.