1. Fausto Zonaro was an Italian painter, best known for his realist style paintings of life and history of the Ottoman Empire.
14 Facts About Fausto Zonaro
1. 2.
Fausto Zonaro was born in Masi, a municipality in the Province of Padua, then part of the Austrian Empire.
3.
Fausto Zonaro was the eldest child of the mason Maurizio and his wife Elisabetta Bertoncin.
4.
Maurizio intended that his son should be a mason, yet at a young age, Fausto showed a great ability at drawing.
5.
Fausto Zonaro opened a small art school and studio in Venice, but traveled often to Naples as well.
6.
Fausto Zonaro felt no clear direction in his life at that time.
7.
Fausto Zonaro actively displayed works in exhibition and gained respect of critics.
8.
Fausto Zonaro painted mainly genre works in oil and watercolor.
9.
The turning point in Fausto Zonaro's career occurred however in 1891, when he fell in love with photographer Elisabetta Pante, a pupil of his in Venice, and together they traveled to Istanbul, capital of the Ottoman Empire, inspired in part by Edmondo de Amicis' orientalist travel book Constantinopoli.
10.
Fausto Zonaro remained in Istanbul until 1909, then returned to Italy after the Young Turk Revolution that overthrew his patron Abdulhamid II and made Ottoman Empire a constitutional monarchy.
11.
Fausto Zonaro settled in Sanremo where, until his death, he continued to produce small paintings of the Italian Riviera and the nearby French Riviera, as well as nostalgic scenes of the Bosphorus to assuage his yearning for Istanbul.
12.
Fausto Zonaro is buried in the Foce Cemetery in Sanremo.
13.
On his gravestone, beneath an Ottoman tughra, it states that Fausto Zonaro was the court painter of the Ottoman Empire.
14.
Some of Fausto Zonaro's paintings are in the Pera Museum in Istanbul and the Istanbul Museum of Modern Art.