Giovanni Volpato

In 1771, following a suggestion of his patron Girolamo Zulian, he moved to Rome, where he founded a school of engraving and gained a reputation for his series of plates after the frescoes of the Raphael Rooms and Loggias in the Vatican (1770–77).

Some of these plates[1] were hand-coloured by Francesco Panini, and did not necessarily reproduce the actual design or subjects of the Loggias' vaults and pilasters, but they became much in demand among visitors to Rome.

Volpato made excavations in Ostia (1779, with the antiquarian Thomas Jenkins), Porta San Sebastiano (1779) and Quadraro (1780); and sold sculptures to king Gustav III of Sweden (1784), to the Vatican Museums, and to the British collector, Henry Blundell.

[5] In 1785, he established a porcelain factory that made ceramic replicas of Greco-Roman originals[6] to satisfy the demand for antique art during the Neoclassic period.

[7] In 1789, Volpato collaborated with the architect Giuseppe Panini, brother of Francesco, on commemorative prints of the Santa Maria in Monserrato degli Spagnoli church, on the occasion of the death of Charles III of Spain in 1788.