Fernando Brambila

Fernando Brambila, or Ferdinando Brambilla, was an Italian painter and engraver who spent most of his life in Spain, where he worked for the Royal Court. He is best known for his participation in the Malaspina Expedition.

He was born in Cassano d'Adda. He decided to become an artist at an early age and worked as a painter in Milan, where he studied with Giocondo Albertolli at the Brera Academy. His early style was heavily influenced by the French painter Claude Joseph Vernet.

In 1790, he was working as a set designer and scenery painter at La Scala when Francesco Melzi d'Eril and Count Paolo Greppi, on behalf of the Spanish government, proposed that he be added to the Malaspina Expedition as one of the official artists. He was hired, together with Giovanni Ravenet, a painter from Parma, to replace artists who had resigned.

In April 1791, he began his journey to join the expedition. After making his way to La Coruña, he boarded the frigate El Cortés, headed for America. He met with the expedition at Acapulco, where he executed his first paintings. The naturalist Antonio Pineda later claimed that Brambila also travelled about to paint Aztec antiquities, but these works have not been found.

He was stationed aboard the corvette Atrevida. His paintings included numerous panoramic views with the precise details of defensive systems, monuments etc.; from Guam, the Mariana Islands, Palapa, Sorsogon City and Zamboanga in the Philippines, Macao, Port Jackson and Parramatta in Australia, Vava'u, Lima, Buenos Aires and Montevideo.

He and Ravenet returned together in 1795 and remained in Spain, working for the government at a rate of 27,000 reales per year, as stipulated in their contract. He created lithographs and engravings based on his paintings for a book on the expedition. In 1799, on the occasion of Cardinal Luis María de Borbón's elevation to Archbishop of Toledo, he designed and created a triumphal arch for the Cathedral. That same year, King Carlos IV named him "Painter, Architect and Decorator for the Royal Court". He was married the following year, but had only one son before becoming a widower.

Text courtesy of Wikipedia, 2023