Antonio Joli was an accomplished painter of architectural capriccios in the tradition of Giovanni Paolo Panini and topographical views in the manner of Canaletto. Born in Modena, Joli was first trained as a scene painter before studying in Rome with Giovanni Paolo Panini.
His flourishing career as a scenographer carried him from theatre to theatre in Venice, Padua, Modena, and Reggio Emilia. Between 1744 and 1748 he was in London, employed at the King’s Theatre in the Haymarket, and in 1749 he was summoned to Madrid to work at the royal theatre of the Buen Retiro, organising court entertainments.
He returned in 1756 to Venice, where he is recorded as a painter of perspectives, landscapes, and ornaments, and finally settled in Naples in 1762, working as the scenographer at the Teatro San Carlo and view painter to Carlo III and Fernando IV. Joli’s view paintings were popular with Grand Tourists. He was among the first artists to paint views of the temples of Paestum, and his detailed depictions court and urban life in Naples offer superlative windows into life in eighteenth-century Italy.
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