Italian painter, illustrator, and author, Tommaso Minardi began his career as a pupil of Giuseppe Zauli. His initial activity in Rome consisted in ten years of employment with the engraver Giuseppe Longhi, for whom he did reproduction drawings of Michelangelo's Last Judgment in the Sistine Chapel; in addition, he studied the works of Leonardo and Raphael. In 1819, on behest of the neoclassical sculptor Antonio Canova, Minardi was named director of the Academy in Perugia. From 1821 to 1858, he was employed as an instructor at the Accademia di San Luca in Rome. //