Peter Pezzati (September 18, 1902 – February 19, 1993) was an American portrait artist who was located in the Boston area.[1] His art was rooted in the Renaissance tradition. His artwork included landscapes, pen and ink drawings, watercolors, pastel and oil portraits.[1]
Pezzati graduated from Boston College High School in 1917 where he studied both Latin and Greek. He was to eventually master six languages. He then won a scholarship to the Child-Walker School of Arts and Crafts in Boston; there he studied under American painter Charles Hopkinson, who took him on as an assistant.
In the mid-1920s he taught art at the Child-Walker School for two years, then went on a six-month traveling and painting tour of Europe, especially France and Italy, arriving back in Boston just in time to attend his sister Josephine's wedding on February 19, 1928, where he was the best man of Bruno Ferroli. He continued to apprentice under Hopkinson, and worked at Hopkinson's Fenway studio.[1]
Pezzati married Mary E. Palmer of Boston in about 1942.[4] They had two children, Pamela born in 1944.[4] and Peter. He was interviewed by the Smithsonian on July 15, 1971 as part of the Archives of American Art's Oral History Program.[5] He also donated some of his personal papers to the Archives of American Art between 1971 and 1983.[6]
He was a member of the Dante Society of America.[7] On February 19, 1993 Pezzati died, at the age of ninety, of cerebral vascular disease in Westwood, Massachusetts,[1] where he had retired with his second wife, Dr. Madeleine Field Crawford after having lived in Needham, Massachusetts for over twenty years.[1]
