CHILONE, Vincenzo

Italian painter, a pupil of Canaletto, active in Venice. The Neo-classicalGLOSSARYRelating to the culture of ancient Greece and Rome (classical Antiquity). The classical world played a profoundly important role in the Renaissance, with Italian scholars, writers, and artists seeing their own period as the rebirth (the "renaissance") of classical values after the Middle Ages. The classical world was considered the golden age for the arts, literature, philosophy, and politics. Concepts of the classical, however, changed greatly from one period to the next. Roman literature provided the starting point in the 14th century, scholars patiently finding, editing and translating a wide range of texts. In the 15th century Greek literature, philosophy and art - together with the close study of the remains of Roman buildings and sculptures-expanded the concept of the classical and ensured it remained a vital source of ideas and inspiration. movement in Venice included a number of artists of note, who often painted the cultivated and refined decorations for buildings erected or renovated in the period. Among the artists who continued to draw inspiration from the great Venetian Vedutisti were Vincenzo Chilone and Ippolito Caffi. Chilone's paintings were rather dry and superficial, and they failed to achieve the union between figures and architectural setting that had seemed so spontaneous in the eighteenth century.