Italian painter, part of a family of painters, draughtsmen and printmakers, active in Austria. His training was based on the works of such masters as Titian and Veronese, and his activity in Austria, documented from 1562, comprised substantial decorative projects and altarpieces, drawings and numerous engravings. In 1562 he and his brother Giulio Fontana (active 1562–1578) executed frescoes (destroyed) in the chapelGLOSSARYa small separate place for worship, either part of a large church or a separate building. of Schloss Kaiser-Ebersdorf in Vienna; in 1573 he was in Innsbruck, where he settled and in 1575 became court painter to Archduke Ferdinand of Austria.
In Innsbruck he created frescoes for the oratoryGLOSSARYA place where Oratorians pray or preach; a small private chapel. of the Hofkirche; the spheristerion (1573); the Silberne Kapelle, built by Giulio Fontana, in which he executed 14 scenes of the PassionGLOSSARYThe events leading up to Good Friday, beginning with Christ's arrest and ending with his burial. Portrayals of the Passion, which focus on the Suffering Christ, include depictions of Judas betraying Christ with a kiss, Peter cutting off Malchus's ear, the crown of thorns, and so on. (1576); and a room in the castle (1578). A more important work was the decoration of the ceiling of the dining-hall of Schloss Ambras, illustrating Allegories of the Zodiac, the Elements and the Planets (1583–84; in situ). In 1576 Fontana painted the altarpieceGLOSSARYA picture or sculpture that stands on or is set up behind an altar. The term reredos is used for an ornamental screen or partition, not directly attached to the altar table but affixed to the wall behind it. A diptych is an altarpiece consisting of two panels, a triptych one of three panels, and a polyptych one of four or more panels. From the 14th to 16th century, the altarpiece was one of the most important commissions in European art; it was through the altarpiece that some of the most decisive developments in painting and sculpture came about. for the Gotteshaus in Seefeld and in 1580 a portraitGLOSSARYThe Roman portrait bust survived in the form of life-sized reliquaries of saints, but it was in 15th century Florence that the individual features and character of a contemporary sitter were accurately recorded by sculptors such as Donatello, Desiderio da Settignano, Mino da Fiesole and the Rossellino. A similar degree of realism occurs in 15th century tomb sculpture. The equestrian portrait, based on antique statues such as the Marcus Aurelius monument (Rome, Campidoglio), was revived in the 14th century. Two examples in fresco are Simone Martini's Guidoriccio (c. 1328; Siena, Palazzo Pubblico) and the posthumous portrait of Sir John Hawkwood (1436; Florence, Cathedral) by Uccello, which gives the illusion of a 3-dimensional statue seen from below. The Venetian Republic ordered imposing monuments from Donatello (1447; Gattarnelata, Padua) and Verrocchio (14799; Colleoni, Venice), whilst other statesmen ordered their own images to be erected in public places, directly relating themselves to the military heroes of ancient Rome. Another form of political portraiture derived from antiquity was the commemorative portrait medal designed by artists such as Pisanello. The carved or painted profile portrait became popular in the 1450s. The realism of the clear, flattened image, painted under the influence of Flemish examples by the Pollaiuolo brothers, Piero della Francesca and Botticelli, was superseded by the three-quarter and frontal portrait, psychologically more complex, such as Leonardo's enigmatic Mona Lisa (Paris, Louvre) with her momentary smile or Andrea del Sarto's arresting Portrait of a Man (London, National Gallery). The 16th century portrait became generalized, Lotto's Andrea Odoni (1527; Royal Collection) being an idealized concept of a collector rather than an individual. Group portraits, decorating whole rooms, include the narrative scenes of the Gonzaga court painted by Mantegna (completed 1474; Mantua, Palazzo Ducale) and the elaborate schemes commissioned by the Farnese family in Rome from Vasari (1546; Palazzo della Cancelleria) and Salviati (after 1553; Palazzo Farnese). Portraits were also incorporated into religious narratives, as in Ghirlandaio's fresco cycle painted for Giovanni Tornabuoni in S. Maria Novella, Florence (1486-90). of the Cardinal Archduke Andreas of Austria; in 1582 he provided drawings for the catalogue of the collection of armour at Schloss Ambras.
Seventy-eight etchings (1559–79) have been attributed to Giovanni Battista Fontana, but they present considerable stylistic and technical disparities and are not always signed or initialed; possibly Giulio Fontana contributed to them. The engravings include prints of paintings by Titian, Veronese and Domenico Campagnola, as well as original designs by Giovanni Battista Fontana; in many cases he probably produced only the drawing. Of four additional folios (Passavant), that depicting the Flight into Egypt (1580), initialed B.F., has a freedom and immediacy of touch reminiscent of Campagnola’s xylographs. In other copper engravings, however, Fontana used a fine point to render minute depictions: for example, a series of twenty-seven illustrations of the story of Romulus and Remus (1573), dedicated to the Archduke, and a series of seven sheets with the Parables of Christ, set in picturesqueGLOSSARYTerm covering a set of attitudes towards landscape, both real and painted, that flourished in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. It indicated an aesthetic approach that found pleasure in roughness and irregularity, and an attempt was made to establish it as a critical category between the 'beautiful' and the 'Sublime'. Picturesque scenes were thus neither serene (like the beautiful) nor awe-inspiring (like the Sublime), but full of variety, curious details, and interesting textures — medieval ruins were quintessentially Picturesque. Natural scenery tended to be judged in terms of how closely it approximated to the paintings of favoured artists such as Gaspard Dughet, and in 1801 the Supplement to Samuel Johnson's Dictionary by George Mason defined 'Picturesque as: 'what pleases the eye; remarkable for singularity; striking the imagination with the force of painting; to be expressed in painting; affording a good subject for a landscape; proper to take a landscape from.' The Picturesque Tour in search of suitable subjects was a feature of English landscape painting of the period, exemplified, for example, in the work of Girtin and (early in his career) of Turner, and the Picturesque generated a large literary output; much of it was pedantic and obsessive and it became a popular subject for satire. landscapes of northern style, which are among his most convincing works.
