Livio Retti

Livio Retti (30 November 1692 – 2 January 1751) was an Italian Baroque painter who worked mainly in present-day South Germany, at the time the Duchy of Württemberg, the Duchy of Bavaria, some secular or ecclesiastical Franconian principalities and some free imperial cities such as Schwäbisch Hall.

Origin and family The Retti illustrated in Germany and the Czech Republic the emigration of Italian artists to Europe from the Alpine valleys near Como, such as the Marca, of Franche-Comté or the Landi and Resti of Hungary. Leaving their families in their native villages, where they may or may not return at the end of their lives, the children of a few families of Italian marble workers or stucco workers were apprenticed to a master who had already left, usually from his own family. The apprentice followed his master wherever he went. There he met the other apprentices. Between them, there were contracts and worksites. It was not uncommon for brothers to work together in the same specialization; they married girls from associated families and were highly mobile from their respective points of attachment. Over time, the disciplines became more specialized and complex, so that the members of the siblings were no longer as versatile as in the 16th century. The architect, although himself versed in painting or stucco, gradually took on a dominant hierarchical role and distributed the tasks.

Retti was indeed from a family of artists: his father was Lorenzo Mattia Retti, he was a stucco master His brother Donato Riccardo Retti was also a stucco artist (He was with Emanuele Pighini the interior designer of the baroque interior of the collegiate church of Ellwangen his brothers Leopoldo and Paolo Retti were both architects His uncle Donato Giuseppe Frisoni was a master stucco artist and architect.

It was his uncle Frisoni who changed the fate of the Retti family by accepting the contract offered to him by Eberhard Louis, Duke of Württemberg for the construction and completion of his new Ludwigsburg Palace which would become one of the largest baroque castles in Germany. Previously, Frisoni worked as a stucco craftsman in Prague.

The Retti were no exception because there were other Italian artists, travelling or not, who worked on construction sites in southern German-speaking countries and especially in Prague. The families of stuccoers and craftsmen from the Val d'Intelvi, in the Como region, merged and helped each other, among them the Carloni, the Retti, the Scotti, the Aliprandi, the Barberini, the Quaglio, and in 1743, he was appointed court painter of the Electoral Palatinate.

He specialized in mural paintings and mainly frescoes of church ceilings or official buildings representative of the regional nobility.

His uncle first called him for the decoration of the Ludwigsburg Palace. His major work is the fresco of the ceiling of the Ordenskapelle in the ducal residence. and a specialist in rococo architecture such as the Retti-Palais in Ansbach.

Schwäbisch Hall

Between 1736 and 1738, Retti was called by the advisers of the free imperial city of Schwäbisch Hall for the interior decoration of the new Baroque town hall which was built on the site of a Franciscan convent church devastated by a fire in the city in 1728.

Retti painted 22 murals in the town hall of Schwäbisch Hall whose rooms were originally equipped with parquet floors with sculpted benches.

These were actually oil paintings on canvas that were stretched on ceilings or walls. He did not paint a fresco directly on the wall after treatment. His paintings were then framed by a stucco decoration, often representing naturalistic motifs, and decorated with figurative medallions. After the fire, traces of wall paintings were found directly below Retti's oil paintings; they represented landscapes of Hall, Limpurg, Vellberg and the Comburg.

The current paintings in the City Hall are copies. There are three rooms: the heroes' room; Alexander the Great destroys the Gordian knot (wall) Aeneas saves his father Anchises from Troy on fire (wall) The martyred death of Marcus Curtius (wall) Achilles, Patroclus, Hector, Aeneas, Romulus, Caesar, Pompey, Scipio and Hannibal (ceiling) the Hall which revolves around the allegory of the city republic of Hall.

Retti also realized the allegory entitled "The Beneficial Power of Fire". and the allegory entitled "The destructive power of fire".

Retti's original works in Schwäbisch hall no longer exist. They were destroyed by a fire that ravaged the interior of City Hall after an incendiary bombing on April 16, 1945. The renovation of the building was completed in 1955.