Giovanni Folo Biography
He was born in Bassano on 20 April 1764, after training in his hometown with the painter Giulio Golini, he was a pupil in Venice of the late Tiepolo painter Giambattista Mengardi. In a short autobiographical memoir, F. recalls that he "did his elementary studies in drawing in Venice, where in the first competition he won the Gold Medal Award for having presented the painting of St. Peter and Paul by Bassano" (Rome, Historical archive of the National Academy of S. Luca, vol. 169, n. 50, from now: Arch. S. Luca). In reality, documentation has been found of the competition announced by the Academy of Venice on 29 February 1783 and concluded on 21 March 1784 with the victory of Folo who had presented the mentioned painting. The natural continuation of Folo's training was therefore his move to Rome, after 1784, to work in Volpato's studio, whose varied environment, frequented by internationally renowned artistic personalities, favored his broad cultural maturation. The professional activity at Volpato initially had to be carried out as a real apprenticeship during which, as a pupil of the son-in-law of the Bassano engraver, the already established Raffaello Morghen, Folo practiced engraving by collaborating in the creation of the branches without signing them. In fact, a translation of the Holy Family by PP Rubens from 1786 is mentioned, signed by Morghen, but largely engraved by F. (Palmerini, 1819). Among the first independent commissions from Volpato's studio was the participation in the reproduction of Raphael's tapestries in the Vatican, designed by the engraver Stefano Piale in collaboration with the publisher Spagna and the engraver Angelo Campanella and announced by the Memoirs for the Fine Arts of 1788 (p. C CXCVI). An engraving from the series, dedicated to Pius VI, is actually signed by F. whose collaboration in the reproduction of the Vatican tapestries is remembered by Nagler (IV, 1837, p. 395). In 1795 Folo created ten tables of large format and quality from drawings by Bernardino Nocchi and Stefano and Agostino Tofanelli, which will appear in the Selected Borghesiani Monuments, published only in 1821, edited by Stefano Piale and Giovanni Gherardo De Rossi (Giovannelli, 1992- 93, pp. 270 f., 302 f.; González-Palacios, 1993). The importance and success of this commission are confirmed by the fact that in the portrait of F., created by Bernardino Nocchi in those years, the engraver holds in his hands a print of Diana, the so-called gypsy, from the Borghese collection (Busiri Vici, 1965, p. 13; Numerous letters from the 1990s, most of them addressed to his cousin Bartolomeo Gamba who directed the Remondini chalcography in Venice and collaborated in the commercial diffusion of Folo's prints in the North, testify to the intensification of his activity. The natural culmination of the success of the first decade of the century was the election of Folo as academic of merit of the Accademia di S. Luca on 30 August 1812. The election was perhaps supported by Canova himself, then prince of S. Luca. Probably around 1830 Folo reproduced the plaster model of Christ that Thorvaldsen had modeled in Rome in 1821 in Canova's studio and then sculpted in marble in Carrara for the Copenhagen cathedral. Folo's engraving is based on a drawing by Tommaso Minardi; in comparison with the graphics of this artist he completes the final metamorphosis, adhering fully, with the wisdom of an extraordinarily ductile technique and a profound sensitivity, to the formal and ethical values of the new art. Folo died in Rome on 7 July 1836.
