Figura d'aprile Giovani atleti Lo specchio Guglielmo Janni (1892–1958) was an Italian painter belonging to the modern movement of the Scuola romana (Roman School).
In 1921, he exhibited at the 1st Biennale of Rome and around 1924 he was called to decorate the Headquarters of the Banca d'Italia, where he painted a mural on the history of Italian coinage.
In 1928, Janni painted a fresco in the votive chapel of St. Bartholomew ("Monument to the Fallen") at Busseto (Parma), with influences from Piero della Francesca.
He was congratulated by art critic Roberto Longhi, who praised Janni's literary style of painting – an appropriate evaluation, as the artist's figurative work had acquired a "vocation to myth" that will be reflected in all his subsequent work: he will convey it through a tormented and sensual contemplation of the virile form, often concealed by an ambiguous and mundane veil:[2] his "Endymion" of 1931 confirms this fully.
He then decided to dedicate the rest of his life to studying, editing and cataloguing his grandfather Belli's unpublished writings, stored in the family library.