Giovanni Antonio Pellegrini was a pupil of the Lombard painter Paolo Pagani (1661-1716), with whom he travelled through Austria and Moravia in the 1690s. As a typical itinerant artist, Pellegrini worked in many cities in Europe. In 1700 he left for two years in Rome. In 1704 he married in Venice the painter Angiola Carriera, the sister of the pastel painter Rosalba Carriera. At the invitation of Charles Montagu, he travelled to London with Marco Ricci in 1708, where he stayed until 1713. From 1713 to 1716 - with interruptions - he worked in the service of the elector Johann Wilhelm von der Pfalz in Düsseldorf. He also worked in Antwerp, Amsterdam, The Hague and Paris. Meanwhile, he returned to Venice time and again. In 1724 he worked in Würzburg, in 1725 in Dresden, in 1725-1727 and 1730 in Vienna and finally in 1736-1737 in Mannheim. In 1737 he returned to Venice for good, and died there in 1741. Among his major works were decorations for Castle Howard (destroyed), Burlington House (now in Narford Hall, Norfolk), and Kimbolton Castle in England, for Bensberg Palace near Cologne, for the Mauritshuis in The Hague, and the Banque Royale in Paris (destroyed), also for the two southern pavilions in Dresden's Zwinger (destroyed), for the Würzburg Residenz and the palace in Mannheim (destroyed in the Second World War).
