Natale Schiavoni

Schiavoni was born in Chioggia, near Venice, and was claimed by Frederick Mason Perkins to be a distant descendant of Andrea Schiavone, the Renaissance painter.

He was peripatetic, traveling in 1800 to Trieste, and in 1810 to Milan, where he painted Eugène de Beauharnais and the royal family.

[1] In 1816, Schiavoni was invited by the Austrian emperor to Vienna, to become the official portraitist for the court.

Among his works are a Penitent Magdalene (1852), in the National Gallery of Berlin; a painting on the same subject at the Vienna Museum; a Bacchante, at the Stadel Gallery in Frankfort; and an Adoration of Shepherds, displayed at the British Museum, London.

The art historian, Pietro Selvatico [it], later described his works as in coloring, highly skillful, but in shading, inimitably supreme.