GIOVANNI

COSTA (1826–1903)  , Italian painter, was born in Rome . He fought under Garibaldi in 1848, and served as a volunteer in the war of 1859; and his enthusiasm for Italian unity was actively shown again in 1870, when he was the first to mount the breach in the assault of Rome near the Porta Pia . He had settled meanwhile at Florence, where his fight for the independence of art from worn-out traditions was no less strenuous, and he became known as a landscape-painter of remarkable originality, and of great influence in the return to minute observation of nature . He had many English friends and followers, notably Matthew Ridley Corbet (1850-1902), and Lord Carlisle, and was closely associated with Corot and the Barbizon school . In later years he lived and worked mainly in Rome, where his studio was an important centre . An exhibition of his pictures was held in London in 1904, and he is represented in the Tate Gallery . He died at Rome in 1903 . See also Madame Agresti's Giovanni Costa (1904) .