Nino Costa (1826–1903)

The Roman landscape painter Nino Costa was one of the most international Italian painters of his time and an inspiration to compatriots and non-Italian artists alike.
This first monograph on him provides valuable insights into his life, his poetic art, and the seminal role he played at the center of a lively international network of artists. Dissatisfied with the traditional approaches of Italian academic painters, Costa turned to the international artist community of his native Rome for inspiration. At first, Costa looked to the painters following Jean-Baptiste Corot's poetic approach to realism and then further developed his art working in close contact with English colleagues such as George Mason and Frederic Leighton.
A patriot as well as a painter, Costa fought for both the unification of Italy and for a reinvigorated art that appropriately represented his homeland. Alongside his call for a new approach to national art, Costa continued to develop his own artistic practice within a cosmopolitan circle.
As well as tracing the history of Costa's life, this monograph pays particular attention to the cultural contexts of his French, Swiss, German, Italian and English colleagues, an approach that underscores his role as a transnational artist and as a catalyst for change in nineteenth-century European landscape painting.