Overview
Federico Zandomeneghi was born in Venice into a line of neoclassical sculptors. As a youth he showed a preference for painting, entering the Venetian Academy of Fine Arts at age 15. To escape conscription into the Austrian army, he fled to Pavia and continued his education. At 19, he joined the military campaign of revolutionary leader Guiseppe Garibaldi in Sicily as part of the War for Independence against the Austrian Empire. Unable to return to Venice due to his military involvement with Garibaldi’s cause, he moved to Florence where he became acquainted with the Florentine painters known as the Macchiaioli. During this period from 1862-1866, Zandomeneghi painted the Palazzo Pretorio of Florence infusing the historical-romantic tradition with a Macchiaiolian sense of air and light.
In 1874, at the age of 33 Zandomeneghi moved to Paris where he would spend the rest of his life. He often frequented the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes. It was here he met Degas, who was seven years his senior. The two became fast friends, and in 1879, Degas invited his friend “Zando” to participate in the Fourth Impressionist Exhibition. Zandomeneghi went on to participate in three subsequent exhibitions in 1880, 1881 and 1886, earning the nickname “Le Venetian” due to his use of luminous yet subtle color akin to the work of the Macchiaioli. Now a notable figure painter, he took up pastels in the 1890s to keep up with an increase of commissions generated by his agent Paul Durrand-Ruel and new interest in his work from America.
Three years before his death he was granted his first show in his native Italy. He died on the last day of 1917 aged 76. Influenced by his contemporaries Mary Cassatt and Pierre-Auguste Renoir as well as his Italian heritage, Zandomeneghi is best remembered for his female portraiture depicting women going about their every-day life.