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Ludovico David (1648-1709)
Aliases: Lodovico David; Lodovico Antonio David; Giacomo Lodovico Davide
Professions: Painter
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Ludovico David Lugano 1648-1720 Roma , Adorazione dei pastori olio su tela
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David, Lodovico Antonio : Die hl. Maria Magdalena mit Totenkopf und Kreuz
Ludovico David Biography
(b Lugano, 13 June 1648; d after 6 July 1709). Italian painter and theorist. He went to Milan about 1665 to study painting under Francesco Cairo. A decade later he moved to Venice, where for the Lombard chapel of S Maria dei Frari he painted St Carlo Borromeo Distributing Alms to the Poor (in situ) in the dark, dramatic, fully Baroque manner of his teacher. David’s other documented works in Venice are in S Maria del Carmelo and the Palazzo Albizzi a Sant’Aponal. While in Venice he also operated a highly successful art academy, remarkably, in competition with Pietro della Vecchia, a far more successful painter. Contemporary reports indicate that ‘he contradicted della Vecchia at every turn’, and that he played down the importance of drawing, making it secondary to the painter’s own ideas. This attitude was highly radical, given that drawing was then considered the basis of an artist’s education. By May 1686 David was in Rome, where he remained for the rest of his life. His two large canvases for S Andrea al Quirinale, the Adoration of the Magi and the Adoration of the Shepherds , are generally considered his best works. Both were commissioned some time after 1691 by Cardinal Pietro Ottoboni, the nephew of Pope Alexander VIII. They are painted with rich colours and turbulent rhythms, in the manner of the much-acclaimed Death of St Francis Xavier by Giovanni Battista Gaulli (known as Baciccio) in the same church. David is now recognized as the first true scholar of Leonardo da Vinci. Though his essay on Leonardo is untraced, his research method (as known from his letters) was based on lengthy and painstaking examination and decipherment of the artist’s original manuscripts, such as the Codex Leicester (Holkham Hall, Norfolk, Lib.), which in the late 17th century was in Rome in the possession of the painter Giuseppe Ghezzi.
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