Baldassare Verazzi


Baldassare Verazzi was an Italian painter.

Life

Verazzi was born in Caprezzo, Verbano-Cusio-Ossola, Piedmont. He studied at the Academy of Brera at Milan from 1833 to 1842, then under the Venetian Romantic painter Francesco Hayez in 1851, and participated in several exhibitions in Turin and Milan.
He took his inspiration from history and religion. His masterpiece is considered to be Episodio delle Cinque Giornate - known in English as Episode from the Five Days .
Heavily involved in the Risorgimento, he was hunted down by the Austrian authorities in 1848 and forced to live under severe proscriptions. He left for Argentina in 1856, where he taught and painted local personalities, scenes of everyday life and history paintings of political or military events. He also decorated the original Teatro Colón. He returned to Italy and installed himself near Lake Maggiore, and the landscape of that area proved a new source of inspiration for paintings that he then produced with his son Serafino. He died in Lesa, aged 67.