Biagio Rebecca
Italian, 1731–1808
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Biagio Rebecca was an Italian artist, active mainly as a decorative painter in England.
Rebecca was born at Osimo, near Ancona, in the Marches, and served his apprenticeship in Rome.
In England he became known for neoclassical scenes from mythology, often working on decorative schemes in collaboration with Robert Adam, for example at Harewood House and at Kedleston Hall. He also decorated Heaton Hall in Prestwich, near Bury, Lancashire and frescoed a ceiling at the Marine Pavilion at Brighton. With Angelica Kauffman, he painted the old lecture room at Somerset House, then home of the Royal Academy. He also designed a set of stained glass windows in the chapel at New College, Oxford.
He was employed to do some painting at Audley End House by Sir John Griffin. In late 1772 Ann White, a servant at the house, gave birth to his illegitimate son, John Biagio Rebecca. Rebecca acknowledged that he was the father, and agreed to deposit £100 with Sir John Griffin Griffin for the support of the child, thus absolving himself of any further responsibility to it or its mother. A note in the baptismal register at Saffron Walden describes Rebecca as "a most ingenious artist who was employed by Sir John Griffin, at Audley End, to paint the ceiling & Panels of ye little south drawing Room, & several family portraits in the great Room over the eating Parlor!!!" John Biagio Rebecca became a respected architect.
He exhibited four works at the Royal Academy in 1770–02, and was elected an Associate of the Academy in 1771.
