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Appiani, Giuseppe
(b Porto, nr Milan, ?1701; d Triefenstein, Franconia, ?1785–6). Italian painter, active in Germany. As a youth he assimilated the decorative traditions of Lombard painting and was deeply influenced by Venetian artists, chiefly Giambattista Tiepolo. He probably left Italy as a young man, travelling to Bavaria, where he was attracted to the art of Carlo Innocenzo Carlone, and then, perhaps between 1720 and 1730, to that of Jacopo Amigoni. Appiani’s earliest confirmed works are four preparatory studies (three pairs of Classical figures and the Parnassus, all c. 1743; priv. col., see Zubeck, figs 1–4) for frescoes in the castle (destr. 1793) at Saarbrücken. From 1745 he lived in Mainz, where he became the foremost court painter, and between 1748 and 1751 he executed frescoes of sacred subjects in churches in Lindau and Oberdorf. His two most notable surviving early fresco cycles are that in the refectory of the former Premonstratensian monastery of SS Peter and Paul, Obermarchtal (including the Triumph of St Norbert; 1750–51), and the mythological scenes (e.g. Neptune, Flora and Venus; 1751–2) at the castle of Seehof (nr Bamberg). About 1757–8 he started an academy of painting in Mainz. Although much of his fresco work is now severely damaged or destroyed, his mature and robust Rococo manner is particularly well represented in three existing fresco cycles at the Neues Schloss in Meersburg (profane and mythological subjects, including a portrait of his patron Franz Konrad von Rodt, Bishop of Konstanz (reg 1750–57); the Domkirche in Arlesheim (Glorification, Annunciation and Assumption of the Virgin; 1759–?61); and the sanctuary of the pilgrimage church at Vierzehnheiligen (e.g. Fourteen Saints, the Nativity, Jacob’s Dream and Moses and the Burning Bush; c. 1764–9). Appiani is thought to have executed numerous altarpieces, but only one has been identified (Voss): the Suffering Job (c. 1764–9; Nuremberg, Ger. Nmus.), which originated from the Vierzehnheiligen programme. During his late career he worked in Höchst, Würzburg, Camberg and Heidenfeld, and in Triefenstein after 1784. He also executed engravings, the most notable being the Four Muses among Clouds.
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