Abstrakt
Luigi Baccio del Bianco (1604-1656) used his many-sided abilities and skills at an early age. The eight-year-old was sent by his father to the painter Giovanni Bilivert, trained by Lodovico Cardi da Cigoli.
Baccio at Bilivert mixed colors, performed marquetry, cut comessi di pietre dure, made triumphal cars, artillery and fireworks. Bilivert taught him to understand drawings, architecture and perspective, as did Vincenzo Boccacci and Giulio Parigi.
The architect and fortress engineer Giovanni Battista Pieroni took him to Vienna and then to Moson, Sopron, Pressburg, Györ and Komárno, where he took part in fortification work everywhere. Pieroni sent Baccio to Prague in September 1622 for fortification work, directed by Albrecht of Waldstein.
Meanwhile, Waldstein hired Baccio for the painterly decoration in the Waldstein Palace under construction. However, the accounts show that Domenico Pugliano painted frescoes.
Baccio left after a year for Milan and then travelled back to Florence, where he worked as a teacher of perspective and "civil and military architecture", took part in a competition for the facade of the Florence Cathedral, fortified the port of Livorno and supervised the buildings in the Arna Valley. He drew as a skilled draftsman cartoons, genre scenes, costume designs, scenography and cardboards for the Medici tapestry manufactory.
As a painter, he participated in the decoration of Casa Buonarroti and a number of other palaces and churches. In 1651 he was sent to the court of Philip IV. to Madrid as a set and costume designer.
He died at the Buen Retiro Palace in Madrid in 1656.