His father was from Santa Margherita Ligure and as a young man had moved to Rome, where he opened a wool-spinning factory and achieved wealth and position.

The family lived in a large house in Piazza San Francesco a Ripa, in Trastevere, close to the factory.

When he was 12 Giovanni was introduced to the neo-classical painter Baron Vincenzo Camuccini, who encouraged him to work from nature and from what he saw around him.

He fought under Garibaldi in 1848, and served as a volunteer in the war of 1859; his enthusiasm for Italian unity was actively shown again in 1870, when he was the first to mount the breach in the assault of Rome near the Porta Pia.

He was a major inspiration to the artists known as the Macchiaioli, and also had many English and American friends and followers, notably Elihu Vedder, Matthew Ridley Corbet (1850–1902) and his wife Edith Corbet, and Lord Carlisle, and was closely associated with Corot and the Barbizon school,[1] whom he met while visiting Paris.