Antonio Maria Zanetti
From The Art and Popular Culture Encyclopedia
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Count Anton[io] Maria Zanetti (1679–1767) was a Venetian artist and art critic, an engraver and connoisseur, and a collector of engraved gems both Greco-Roman and modern, which he published lavishly, in the form of A.F. Gori's Le gemme antiche di Anton Maria Zanetti (1750), illustrated with eighty plates of engravings from his own drawings; the drawings for the engravings, and many of his intaglios and cameos are conserved in the Museo Correr, Venice. His prize piece, a black cameo of Hadrian's favourite, Antinous, which he had pursued for years before acquiring it, was bought by George Spencer, 4th Duke of Marlborough and gained the sobriquet of the "Marlborough gem".
Zanetti spent his early manhood making wise investments in marine insurance, accumulating sufficient capital to support his true vocation, as writer and artist, and as art dealer to the English aristocrats who passed through Venice on the Grand Tour, and as paintings agent for Philippe d'Orléans in forming the Orléans collection, Paris, and Joseph Wenzel I, Prince of Liechtenstein, in expanding the Liechtenstein collection, Vienna. Pierre Crozat, being in Venice in 1715, persuaded Zanetti and his protegé Rosalba Carriera to come to Paris. Zanetti also visited London, where he purchased Jan Petersen Zoomer's three large volumes containing 428 Rembrandt etchings in outstanding impressions of the various states.
As a printmaker, Zanetti forwarded the art of the Chiaroscuro woodcut, producing many prints after paintings by Parmigianino, Tintoretto and others.
The son of his cousin, Anton[io] Maria the younger (1706–1778), was a protegé of the elder Zanetti who developed into a distinguished critic; he collaborated with his elder cousin, providing most of the drawings for a sumptuously illustrated account of the classical sculpture conserved in Venetian public collections, Delle antiche statue greche e romane che nell'anti sala della Libreria di San Marco e in altri luoghi pubblici venezi son trovato, I, Venice, 1740, II, Venice, 1743. Their collaborator for the text was Gori.
The modern monograph on the two Zanetti is Fabio Borroni, I Due Anton Maria Zanetti (Florence, 1956).
Zanetti described some manuscript housed at the Biblioteca Marciana, among them Gr. Z. 495 (1048).
