Gianantonio and his brothers Niccolò and Francesco (also painters), later inherited the family workshop after their father's death in 1716.

His sister Maria Cecilia married the pre-eminent Veneto-European painter of his epoch, Giovanni Battista Tiepolo.

Among his first important clients was the connoisseur and collector Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, for whom Guardi created numerous paintings with an Orientalist theme.

He produced copies after the work of other artists, as well as a series of originals with Turkish-inspired interiors as easel pictures for private decorations.

Antonio Guardi trained his younger brothers Nicolò and Francesco in his workshop, the latter working closely with him as a figure painter before establishing himself as a vedutista in the late 1750s.