Alberto Pasini

Alberto Pasini was an Italian painter. He was raised by his uncle Antonio Pasini, also a painter. At 17 he enrolled at the Accademia di Belle Arti di Parma. After staying for a short time in Turin in 1851, he went to Geneva and then to Paris where he worked primarily as a printmaker. In 1854 he began studying oil painting with Theodore Chassériau and became interested in Orientalist scenes (romanticized views of life in the Middle East).

In March 1855, Pasini was sent as a designer on a diplomatic mission of the French Government to Persia, Turkey, Syria, Saudi and Egypt. During that trip, he made sixty studies and many drawings which were the basis of future oil paintings that made his fortune first in France and then in Italy.

(Source: AskArt.com)