National Galleries of Scotland

Giovanni Battista Lusieri (Italian, about 1755 - 1821)

Lusieri was born in Rome around 1755, and worked in Italy until 1799 when he travelled to Greece with Lord Elgin. In Athens, Lusieri worked as Elgin?s resident artist and agent, and was closely involved in the removal of the marble sculptures from the Parthenon for his patron. Lusieri was active principally as a landscape watercolorist, with a fondness for broad panoramas and cityscapes, and for ancient buildings and monuments. He was considered by many of his contemporaries to be the most skilful topographical artist of his day. His works are characterised by his meticulous and precise technique, and were desirable because of their unusually large scale and exceptional quality. Much of his later production was tragically lost when the ship bringing it back to Britain was wrecked.