Giani\u2019s training as an artist was a complex affair and has yet to be fully understood. He trained initially with the painter Antonio Bianchi and the architect Antonio Galli Bibbiena in Pavia, before moving in 1778 to the Accademia Clementina in Bologna under the painters Domenico Pedrini and Ubaldo Gandolfi, and finally, in 1780, to Rome where he completed his training with the painters Pompeo Batoni and Cristoforo Unterperger and the architect Giovanni Antonio Antolini.<\/p>\n
From that moment on, he was to make the city his home of choice, opting to settle there for good, leaving it for the important commissions on which he was to work in northern Italy but always returning to refresh his art and to pursue his personal study of the ancient world and the old masters. Giani chose from the outset to focus on the decoration of interiors rather than on easel painting, and his first commissions were prestigious: Palazzo Altieri (1789\u201392), three rooms in the Villa Borghese (1785 and 1792) and a copy of Raphael\u2019s loggias for Catherine II of Russia in conjunction with a team coordinated by Cristoforo Unterperger (1778\u201388). While in Rome, he frequented several cultural circles, including that of Angelika Kauffmann, and forged relations with artists from northern Europe.<\/p>\n
Giani opened private academies in his home in Rome and later in Bologna, the Accademia della Pace and the Accademia dei Pensieri, devoted to the free practice of imaginative drawing by the artists gathered there, addressing whatever subjects took their fancy on each occasion. He was summoned to Faenza for the first time in 1786 to work with quadrature specialist Serafino Barozzi on the decoration of the Galleria dei Cento Pacifici. He also worked in Palazzo Conti in Faenza that same year. This marked the start of his special relationship with the city of Faenza, and indeed with Romagna as a whole where he was to work regularly over the next thirty-five years. His second commission in Faenza, in 1794, involved the decoration of the Galleria di Psiche in Palazzo Laderchi, followed by work in Jesi, Assisi and Perugia. During the first French occupation of Rome (1789\u201399), his sympathy with Jacobin ideas led him to play an active role in the new political and cultural climate in the city.<\/p>\n
He was in Faenza once again from 1800 to 1805, when he was responsible for the vast decorative schemes that followed on from one another in the palazzi<\/em> of the city\u2019s new pro-French \u00e9lite, Palazzo Morri, Palazzo Naldi, Palazzo Gessi and Palazzo Milzetti. Of equal importance were the commissions he received from Count Ferdinando Marescalchi and the Secretary of State of the Kingdom of Italy, Antonio Aldini \u2013 leading figures in Bolognese society who were starting to hold important government posts in the Napoleonic administration \u2013 for whom Giani decorated various rooms in their respective palazzi (in 1810 and 1805). He and his workshop were also responsible for the entire decoration of a villa that Aldini rebuilt in Montmorency, close to Paris (1813, now destroyed), in addition to which he received prestigious commissions directly from the Napoleonic government itself, painting a number of rooms in the Palazzo delle Procuratie Nuove in Venice (1807) and several areas of the Emperor\u2019s Apartment in the Palazzo del Quirinale (1812).<\/p>\n Despite these numerous projects, he had never ceased to work in Rome (Palazzo dell\u2019Ambasciata di Spagna, 1806) or in Emilia Romagna, where he worked feverishly on palazzi<\/em> and theatres in Forl\u00ec, Ravenna, Rimini, Imola and Cesena, as well as in Bologna, where most of his work was focused in 1810\u201311. When Napoleon fell, Giani\u2019s renown and reputation remained substantially unaffected by political developments, and he continued to be very much in demand in Emilia (Modena, Ferrara, Bologna) and in Romagna (Palazzo Pasolini dall\u2019Onda and Casa Montanari in Faenza, 1819, and Palazzo Gaddi in Forl\u00ec, 1820).<\/p>\n After being named an academic of the Accademia di San Luca in Rome in 1811, he was also elected to the Accademia dei Virtuosi del Pantheon in 1822. Following what appeared to be a minor fall in Bologna, however, he died of the after-effects in Rome on 11 January 1823.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-7837","artista","type-artista","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinacotecafaenza.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artista\/7837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinacotecafaenza.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artista"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinacotecafaenza.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/artista"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinacotecafaenza.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}