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Landscape by Antonio Viviani, fresco on the loggia of the Palazzo Altemps in Rome

Antonio Viviani (1560-1620) was an Italian painter of the late-Renaissance and early-Baroque. He was also called il Sordo de Urbino (the mute of Urbino), because of his self-absorption while painting frescoes. He was born in Urbino, and there became a follower of Federigo Barocci, whose nephew he is said to have been. He left some pictures at Urbino, in the style of Barocci, various frescoes in Rome, and a vast work in the Chiesa De' Filippini (San Pietro in Valle) at Fano (1618-1620), consisting of scenes from the lives of those apostles to whom the church was dedicated. These works are now in the Pinacoteca civica di Fano. He also painted for the Oratorio della Santissima Annunziata di Urbino.

After 1585, he traveled to Rome, where he helped fresco the Vatican library and the Scala Santa (1585-1590). He also helped fresco for the loggia of the Palazzo Altemps and for the Palazzo Barberini; the latter works were lost to fire and repainting in the 1700s by Lorenzo Pecheux. From 1596-1598, he lived in Genoa. In Urbino, he painted for the Cappelle della Concezione and of the Holy Sacrament in the cathedral.

References

• Bryan, Michael (1889). Walter Armstrong & Robert Edmund Graves. ed. Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical (Volume II L-Z). York St. #4, Covent Garden, London; Original from Fogg Library, Digitized May 18, 2007: George Bell and Sons. pp. page 680. http://books.google.com/books?id=K2cCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA1&dq=Michael+Bryan+Painters+Engravers#PPP7,M1.