Notes

Luigi Mayer, born 1755, was an Italian-German artist and one of the earliest and most important late 18th-century European painters of the Ottoman Empire. He was described as being 'Roman by birth'. However, little is known of his early life. It is believed that his family may have come from Switzerland, before later settling in Rome. He is thought to have been a pupil of the Accademia di San Luca and an assistant to etcher and architect Giovanni Battista Piranesi. Mayer probably left Rome for Naples and Sicily in the early 1770s, when he reputedly worked for the King of Naples. By 1778 he was employed by Prince Biscari, a Sicilian collector and antiquarian based in Catania.¹

¹Gov/Art/Col (no date) Gov/Art/Col , Explore: Luigi Mayer, online, https://artcollection.dcms.gov.uk/person/mayer-luigi/, accessed 30 September 2024.