Giovanni Battista Zelotti

If Palladio designed the villas, Zelotti painted the insides of them. Born in Verona around 1526, he spent his career on fresco cycles in the country houses of the Veneto, and more Palladian interiors are his than anyone else's.

He began alongside Paolo Veronese — both Veronese by birth, both working in the same early commissions — and the two are still occasionally confused in attributions. Their careers then diverged: Veronese went to Venice and to the grand public commissions, while Zelotti stayed with the villas.

The work suited the buildings. Palladio's rooms are plain-walled and well-proportioned, and Zelotti filled them with painted architecture that extends the real architecture — feigned columns, niches, landscapes opening through painted openings — so the decoration completes the plan rather than competing with it. At Villa Godi he worked on Palladio's first villa; at Villa Emo he produced one of the most complete surviving cycles of the kind.

He died in 1578. He is less known than his early colleague, largely because his work is dispersed across private houses in the countryside rather than concentrated in a city.