Marco Liberi (padua Or Venice 1644 - Post 1691), Allegory Of Truth

Marco Liberi (Padua or Venice 1644 - post 1691)

Allegory of Truth

Oil on canvas, cm 34 x 27

With frame, cm 50 x 42

Critical Sheet Prof Massimo Pulini

The canvas presents style characters that suggest the author’s Venetian origin and a lexical autonomy that demonstrates a happy autonomy from the usual lagoon models, revealing us a master we can recognize in Marco Liberi (Padua or Venice 1644 - post 1691). Schoolboy and help of his father Pietro was one of the most successful artists active in the seventeenth century. His training as a painter was shaped by the study of ancient masters, whose father in turn studied on his travels between Rome, Florence, Bologna and Venice, where he moved definitively in 1643 and where he obtained prestigious positions.

As Sartori (1983) writes, Marco "could have been born around 1644, then in Venice, if we believe the note of the «Rollo dei pittori» of 1690, where it is said «of years approximately 46»". The painter is certainly active in 1665, when he worked with his father Pietro on the fresco of the sacristy of the Saint in Padua. In 1688 he is in Venice, where the Danish architect Nicodemus Tessin meets him and sees several of his paintings at the merchant Giacomo Savoldello; but the artist is about to go abroad, also for love affairs, as confirmed by a recording of the Fraglia of the same year 1688, in which it is said «fuora». In 1689 he is in Trento, where he performs the lost Portrait of the prince bishop Giuseppe Vittorio Alberti d'Enno while the following year is for sure in Vienna, as documented by the «Rollo dei pittori» of Venice on 5 June 1690. From here Marco sells to Antonio Lini, in July 1691, the building with thirteen windows built by his father on the Grand Canal. In 1696 he is however back in his homeland, since he executed the altarpiece of the church of the Aracoeli in Vicenza that year.