Shortly after his birth in Vienna in 1699, Giovanni Antonio Guardi, also called Gian Antonio or Antonio, moved with his parents, who came from the Trento region, to Venice, where his father Domenico settled as a painter. After his father's death, the seventeen-year-old Antonio took over his workshop, in which he trained his younger brothers Francesco and Nicolò. He is known mainly as a history painter. His work as a draughtsman was discovered only during the twentieth century, as more and more drawings were attributed to him that had previously been thought to be by his brother Franceco. Antonio's most important client was field marshal Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661-1747), then in the service of the Venetian Republic and residing in the Palazzo Loredan. For him he produced roughly a hundred paintings, including portraits of European nobility and numerous copies after paintings by Venetian painters of the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries. Antonio Guardi became a member of Venice's Academy in 1756.
