Plate 13: a townscape with a fountain, fallen column and statue at right and a Gothic church beside an aqueduct in the background

Davide Antonio Fossati, a painter and etcher, was bom at Morcote, Ticino, Switzerland in 1708, and studied drawing under Vicenzo Maria Mariotti at Venice, and painting under Daniel Gran, with whom in 1723 he went to Vienna. In 1728 he painted the dining-hall in the monastery of St. Martinsberg at Pressburg; but in 1730 he returned to Venice, and in the next year executed the wall-paintings in the villa at Torre, near Este, as also in the nunnery of Santa Margaretta, near Lauis. He afterwards took to etching, but did not succeed at first. His death occurred at Vienna in 1795. His works as a painter are little known, but he has left among his later and happier efforts several etchings of landscapes and historical subjects after various masters.