Lomazzo, Giovanni Paolo (1538–1600)

Italian painter and art theoretician. He worked as a painter until the age of 33, when he went blind and turned to writing on the theory of art producing, for example, his popular Trattato dell'arte de la pittura/Treatise on the Art of Painting in 1584.

Born in Milan, Lomazzo trained as a painter under Gaudenzio Ferrari and worked at the court of Duke Cosimo of Florence. His influential Trattato dell'arte de la pittura is a work in seven parts, dealing with proportion, movement, colour, light, perspective, technique, and art history. It was translated into English as A Tracte Containing the Artes of Curious Paintinge, Carvinge, and Building in 1598.

In 1587 he published a volume of verse, Rime, and in 1590 his art treatise Idea del tempio della pittura.