Dario Varotari the Younger was an Italian painter, engraver and poet of the late Baroque, active around 1660. Probably born around 1650 in Padua, he trained in the workshop of his father, Alessandro Varotari, known as Padovanino, and is remembered mainly for being distinguished from his grandfather of the same name, also a painter.
No canvas by him has survived, but his contemporaries praised his skill as a portraitist, noting a refined colouring in the manner of Giorgione. He seems to have painted more for pleasure and for his friends than as a livelihood. As an engraver, two prints are attributed to him: portraits of Vincenzo Gussoni and of his grandfather. Engravings after works by his father, such as Woman Combing Her Hair and Portrait of a Boy Pointing to the Left, also survive.
Varotari was also a writer. He wrote the libretto of the opera Il Cesare Amante, set to music by Marco Antonio Cesti and staged in Venice in 1651 under the pseudonym Ardió Rivarota, and he worked with Cesti again on Xerxe in 1654. His legacy is modest and is known mainly through contemporary testimony and prints.
Teachers and pupils
Studied with
- Alessandro Varotari 1588–1649