Giambattista Piazzetta e Giulia Lama: un dialogo tra copia e disegno dal vero

This article examines Giambattista Piazzetta’s atelier in early eighteenth-century Venice as a dynamic site of artistic apprenticeship and drawing culture, poised between traditional workshop practice and the emerging framework of institutional academies. With particular attention to the early presence of Giulia Lama, the study explores the interplay between copying an atelier repertory and life drawing as fundamental methods of artistic transmission and the formation of figurative language. Lama’s independent career and hybrid visual vocabulary are considered through her reuse and adaptation of Piazzetta’s motifs, combined with drawing after the life model. The discussion also addresses the socio-economic conditions that fostered mobility within apprenticeship, the changing status of the painter’s craft, and the evolving pedagogical strategies that preceded the foundation of the Venetian Academy. In this way, the article contributes to a broader understanding of the atelier as a locus of exchange and gendered innovation in early modern Venetian art.