(Venice 1677 - 1745)
PROJECT FOR THE FRONT PAGE OF DANIELE FARLATI'S VOLUME ILLYRICUM SACRUM, 1751
Pen and brown ink, gray wash, traces of black chalk. 331 x 230 mm.
Our drawing is a preparatory study, in the same direction and with variants, for the frontispiece of the multi-volume work by the Jesuit ecclesiastical historian Daniele Farlati (1690–1773). The first volume of this history of Dalmatia, which treats Illyria (Dalmatia) as a religious province of Rome, was published in 1751 by Sebastiano Coleti in Venice. Three more volumes followed, but in 1773, two years before the printing of the fifth volume, Farlati died.
There is not much information about Brusaferro's life. The date of birth is deduced from the Rollo of all the painters of the Collegio novo of 1726, in which we read that he was forty-two years old, resident in San Giovanni Decollato, without children or even assistants.
Girolamo Brusaferro attended Niccolò Bambini's school in his youth, where he learned the rules of good painting. He then followed the path of Sebastiano Ricci and finally developed his own style, somehow translating the two masters.