Giuseppe (José) Perovani Rústica (1759-65 – 1835) was an Italian painter of the Neoclassic period. He trained in Rome, and painted altarpieces in Brescia as a young man.Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker, editors: Allgemeines Lexikon der bildenden Künstler von der Antike bis zur Gegenwart (Leipzig, Germany: 37 vols, 1907-50), vol. 27 (1933), p. 89. (English: Thieme-Becker, General Dictionary of Artists from Antiquity to the Present.) He painted the altarpiece (and possibly the trompe l'oeil ceiling) of the Chapel of the Blessed Bernardo Tolomei in the Santa Francesca Romana in Rome.
In 1795, he traveled to Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, where he worked until about 1800. Following a short period in New York City, he moved to Havana, Cuba in 1801, where he completed a number of religious projects over some 14 years. The following 14 years he spent teaching at the Academia de Belles Artes de San Carlos in Mexico City, before retiring in 1829. He returned to teaching in 1834, but died the following year in Mexico City, during a cholera epidemic.
There continues to be confusion about Perovani's exact age, where he was born, and the spelling of his surname. He may have contributed to this: “In the New World, Perovani preferred to say he was ‘Venetian’. but in fact the artist came from the Brescia region of Lombardy.”Miguel Cabañas Bravo, Amelia López-Yarto & Wifredo Rincón García, eds. Art and the Journey (Spain: Higher Council for Scientific Research, 2011).
Although Perovani was best known for his religious works, his most famous painting is his Portrait of George Washington (1796), a variation after Gilbert Stuart's Lansdowne portrait (1796).
In Italy According to an 1807 biographical sketch, Giuseppe Perovani was "accidentally" born in Pavia. His family was from Brescia, 116 km (72 miles) east of Pavia, where he was raised and educated. His father was a merchant, who noticed his son's affinity and ability for drawing. He sent young Giuseppe to study in Rome under Pompeo Battoni.
Perovani was the winner of a student competition to design a public palace for the United States. News of his work was sent to an envoy in Philadelphia [the Spanish Minister?], who invited the young artist to come to America.
It is possible that Perovani never returned to Europe. The 1807 biographical sketch was published in his home city of Brescia, and stated: If he is still alive, he would be around 48 years old. The sketch also misspelled his surname as "Pirovani". The sketch was printed in an 1807 biography of the 16th-century Brescian painter Lattanzio Gambara. The book's subtitle: “Added are brief notes on the most excellent painters of Brescia”.
In the Americas Philadelphia Perovani and a fellow Italian painter arrived in the United States in early July 1795.Mercedes González de Amezúa, “Catalogue 147: Giuseppe Perovani,” Real Academia de San Fernando, Madrid: Guía del Museo (Madrid: Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando), pp. 231-32. Philadelphia then was serving as the temporary national capital, 1790-1800, while Washington, D.C. was under construction. Perovani's first commission in America was a painted ceiling for the residence (embassy?) of the Spanish Minister to the United States, José de Jáudenes y Nebot. Perovani mentioned this in a September 19, 1795 advertisement in Philadelphia's Federal Gazette:Alfred Coxe Prime, The Arts and Crafts in Philadelphia, Maryland, and South Carolina 1786-1800 (Topsfield, MA: The Walpole Society, 1932), p. 26. PEROVANI, JOSEPH AND JACINT COCCHI, of the republic of Venice, Painters, have the honour to inform the public, that they arrived in this respectable city about two months ago. During a residence of several years in the city of Rome, they have given specimens of their art and talents in that city, as well as in several other cities in Italy, having been employed by Princes as well as private persons. Having understood that taste for the fine arts is rapidly increasing in these happy States, they resolved to quit Italy, and to try to satisfy the respectable citizens of America, by their productions. The kind of paintings they excel in, are as follows, viz. The first (Mr. Perovani) paints all kinds of Historical Pieces, Pourtraits of all sizes, and Landscapes, as well as in oil color as in fresco; the other Mr. Cocchi, all kinds of Perspective, Paintings and Ornaments; and both are able to paint any Theatre, Chambers, Departments, with Platforms in figures, and ornamented in the Italian taste: a small specimen whereof they have given in one of the saloons of the house of the Spanish minister here. The one of them likewise is a compleat architect, not only able to furnish the draft in the most compleat stile, but likewise to superintend the execution thereof. They may be found by enquiring at No. 87, Second street North.
The federal government relocated to the District of Columbia over the summer and fall of 1800. President John Adams first occupied the not-yet-finished White House in November, and the House of Representatives and Senate convened in the U.S. Capitol in December.
Perovani spent some time in New York City, before he and his wife, Jane Gordon, relocated to Havana, Cuba in 1801.Richard N. Juliani, Building Little Italy: Philadelphia's Italians Before Mass Migration (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998), pp. 10-11.
Havana
The arrival of Monseñor Juan José Díaz de Espada y Landa in Havana in 1802, "ushered in a series of art and architectural projects."Paul Niell, Urban Space as Heritage in Late Colonial Cuba: Classicism and Dissonance on the Plaza de Armas of Havana, 1754-1828 (Austin, TX: University of Texas Press, 2015). In 1803, Espada commissioned Perovani to create a fresco for Havana's Church of the Holy Spirit, along with two works in oil. That same year, Espada had Perovani create works for the Hospital de San Francisco de Paula.Sandra Gonzáles, "Pintores italianos en Cuba: Giuseppe Pirovani y Ercole Morelli", in Emigrazione e presenza italiana in Cuba, vol. VII, 2008, pp. 48-62.
Monseñor Espada's first major project was the Espada Cemetery (opened 1806, demolished 1908), built about a mile outside Havana's city walls. Espada commissioned the Brescian painter Giuseppe (or José) Perovani (1765–1835), who had come to Cuba via Philadelphia around 1801, to paint frescoes of allegorical figures and Christian narrative scenes. Describing Perovani's now-lost Resurrection scene, Romay Chacón notes an angel with a trumpet telling the souls: “Rise up, ye dead, and come to justice.” To the angel's right, souls departed from their graves; to its left, the damned were shown horrified by their fate. Over the door and the two lateral windows, Perovani painted images of the three theological virtues: Faith, Hope, and Charity.
Perovani painted a fresco of The Final Judgement for the cemetery's chapel, but this has been painted over with whitewash.
In 1806, Monseñor Espada placed Perovani in charge of the interior decoration for Havana's Cathedral of San Cristóbal.Sigfrido Vazquez Cienfuegos, "Omnia Vanitas: Festejos en Honor de Godoy en La Habana en 1807", 2008, Ibero-Americana Pragensia Supplementum 25 (2009), pp. 119-26. Perovani's appointment was published in the Havana newspaper El Aviso Papel: Tuesday, February 4, 1806.Cuba Contemporanea, September 1924, p. 12. Perovani did trompe l'oeil painting on the high altar, making the carved-wood altar appear to have been carved from white marble and jasper.Domingo Rosain, Necropolis de La Habana: Historia de los Cemeterios de Esta Ciudad (Habana, Cuba: Imprenta el Trabajo, Amistad 100, 1875), p. 248. He painted a life-size, full-length, oil-on-canvas portrait of the Virgin of the Immaculate Conception.Willie McCarney, Travel with a Gavel (London, New York & Sharjah: Austin Macauley Publishers, 2022), Cuba, p. 3.
About 1808-10, Perovani began work on three lunette frescos high above and to either side of the high altar: The Last Supper, The Ascension, and The Delivery of the Keys. "Espada first commissioned Perovani, followed by the French expatriate artist Jean-Baptiste Vermay, to complete these paintings; however, we are unclear on the precise extent of each artist's contribution."
"Perovani established a painting academy at Havana and his wife (an American) taught foreign languages: English, French and Italian."Ramiro Guerra, ed. A History of the Cuban Nation: Illustration, freedom of commerce (from 1790 up to 1857), (Habana, Cuba: Editorial Historia de la Nacion Cubana, S.A., 1958), p. 380.
Perovani left Cuba in 1815, with interior work on the cathedral unfinished. Work continued under Perovani's assistant, French painter Jean Baptiste Vermay.Emma Harris Otero, “Cuba”, in Earl Parker Hanson, The New World Guides to the Latin American Republics, Volume 1 (New York: Duell, Sloan and Pearce, Inc., 1945), p. 13.
Mexico City In 1809, Spanish-born artist Rafael Ximeno y Planes received the commission to paint a large fresco of “The Assumption of the Virgin” for the Catedral Metropolitana in Mexico City. With his thorough knowledge of fresco, Perovani assisted Ximeno on the work.
In 1815, Perovani and his family moved to Mexico City. He was elected to the Academia de Belles Artes de San Carlos, and the school's Director of Painting, Rafael Ximeno y Planes, appointed Perovani his lieutenant.Ignacio Miguel Galbis, The Art of Colonial Cuba, MS thesis, (University of California, Riverside, 1985), p. 21. The school put a strong emphasis on drawing, educating architects, draftsmen and botanical illustrators, as well as painters. Professor of Painting Perovani taught at the school until his retirement in 1829.Stefano Cracolici, “Para hacer honor a su patri y a gobierno: Mexican Artists in Rome (1825-1835)”, paper presented at MOTION: TRANSFORMATION: 35th Congress of the International Committee of the History of Arts (Florence, September 1-6, 2019). Abstract, p. 55. About that same year, Mrs. Perovani opened another lay academy for girls in the planned city of Cárdenas, Cuba (founded 1828). Their daughter Elvira seems to have lived nearby, and may have helped at the school. Jane Gordon Perovani died in Cárdenas in 1832.
In 1834, at about age 75, Perovani returned to Mexico City, and began teaching in the Academia school. He died the following year in a cholera epidemic.
Works by Perovani
The Supper at Emmaus (1784), offered at auction, March 25, 2015. Unsold. Portrait of Andrea Memmo (1786).Paolo Girardelli, “From Andrea Memmo to Alberto Blanc: Metamorphoses of Classicism in the Italian Buildings for Diplomacy (1778-1889),” Paolo Girardelli & Ezio Godoli, eds., Italian Architects and Builders in the Ottoman Empire and Modern Turkey: Design across Borders (Newcastle upon Tyne, UK: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2017), p. 7. Memmo was a prominent Italian architect. Drawing: Orpheus, Singing His Bitter Pain at the Loss of Eurydice (1786). Pen, pencil, black ink and brown ink on paper. For sale at Galleria Carlo Virgillo & C., Via della Lupa, Rome, in 2020. Portrait of Cardinal Giovanni Andrea Archetti (1787), oil on canvas. Photo from Posterazzi. Collection: Castello Camozzi Vertova, Bergamo, Italy. Perovani's drawing of an ancient Roman anatomy school was made into an engraving by Antonio Fiori. This illustrated the 1788 edition of Bartolomeo Eustachi's Tabulae anatomicae, a textbook for surgeons and artists.Monique Kornell, Flesh and Bones: The Art of Anatomy (Los Angeles, CA: Getty Publications, J. Paul Getty Trust, 2022), p. 32, fig. 3-7. Perovani apparently submitted architectural designs for a public hall in Philadelphia. This may have been the 1794 student design competition in Rome, that led to the invitation for Perovani to come to America. Blessed Bonaventura da Potenza (by 1795), oil on canvas. Offered at auction, M. & C. Gelardini Arte, Casa d’Aste, Rome, 26 May 2023, lot 8. Unsold.