Antonio Joli was an itinerant Italian view painter and scenographer. Born in Modena, he first studied with Il Menia (Raffaello Rinaldi) where he specialised in vedute.
At the age of twenty, Joli travelled to Rome where he trained with one of the members of the Galli-Bibiena family, famous for their stage designs, and later in the studios of Giovanni Paolo Panini (Piacenza 1691 - Rome 1765) and Viviano Codazzi (Bergamo 1604 circa - Rome 1670), to whom he owed the international style which would later make him famous. In Rome he gained an important commission to decorate the Villa Patrizi and in 1719 became a member of the Accademia di San Luca.
Joli returned to Modena circa 1725. After a brief sojourn in Perugia completing the interior decoration of Palazzo Donnini and Palazzo Crispoldi, he started working for the Duke of Modena. In 1732 he is first documented in Venice, where he designed stage sets for the San Cassiano and San Samuele theatres that were admired by the leading Venetian playwright Carlo Goldoni. During this period Joli painted many views of the city, influenced by Canaletto, Marieschi and Carlevarijs. Unlike Canaletto who abandoned scenography to focus on vedute, Joli immersed himself in the world of stage design and successfully maintained a career in both painting and stage design
until the end of his working life.
In the following decade Joli travelled widely in Europe, first to Dresden and then to London where he worked as a scene painter and assistant manager at the King's theatre, Haymarket from 1744 to 1748. By 1750 Joli was in Madrid, working at the court of King Charles III of Spain at Buen Reitro. He returned to Venice in 1754 and was elected a member of the Venetian Academy the following year. these travels enabled the painter to expand his network of clients and develop his style of painting. Indeed, it is during these years that his vedute increasingly adopted a wide angled perspective, a pictorial device clearly inspired by the painters Vanvitelli and Canaletto. Joli spent his later years in Naples, where he finally settled in 1762, employed as Painter to the King in the Court theatre.
His reputation as a leading Italian view painter earned him many important commissions from Grand tourists, particularly among the English elite: Sir William Hamilton, Lord Montague Brudenell, the Duke of Richmond and Lord Spencer.
Joli's views are characterised by their sophisticated topographical accuracy, especially his Neapolitian views which typically feature members of the court. Many of Antonio Joli's works remain in the private collections of Lord Montagu (Beaulieu, Hampshire) and the Duke of Buccleuch (Bowhill, Scotland) while others are represented in the Metropolitan Museum of Art (New york), the Museo di San Martino (Naples), the Palazzo Reale (Naples) and the Palazzo Reale (Caserta).