Pietro della Vecchia, Pietro della Vècchia or Pietro Vècchia, formerly incorrectly called Pietro Muttoni (Vicenza, 1603 – Venice, 8 September 1678) was a versatile Italian painter who worked in many genres and created altarpieces, portraits, genre scenes and grotesques. He also created pastiches of the work of leading Italian painters of the 16th century. He designed cartoons for mosaics and worked as an art restorer. Della Vecchia was also sought after as an art expert and did expert valuations of artworks. He worked most of his life in Venice and its environs except for a brief stay in Rome. Life The life of Pietro della Vecchia is not very well documented and the information available is not always reliable. He is believed to have been born in Vicenza in 1603 as the son of Gasparo della Vecchia, who was a painter admitted to the Venetian painters guild. Some art historians place the artist's place of birth in Venice. Pietro della Vecchia was erroneously called Pietro Muttoni after Luigi Lanzi in the first edition of his Storia pittorica della Italia (1796), mixed up the artist's name with that of a Muttoni collection, which kept one of his paintings. Later authors interpreted de la Vecchia (meaning 'of the old') as a nickname as the artist liked to imitate the old masters of the previous century. Pietro was in fact a scion of a well-known Venetian family called 'Dalla Vecchia'. Early sources describe Alessandro Varotari, called il Padovanino, as his teacher. On stylistic grounds some art historians have expressed doubt on this traineeship in his early years. The influence of the works of Padovanino is only visible after 1635. So he may have worked with Padovanino at a later stage. His earliest known work show a strong influence by Carlo Saraceni and Saraceni's pupil and collaborator Jean Leclerc. This is an important indication that della Vecchia trained with them. As his work displayed for some time certain Caravaggesque characteristics it is believed that he spent time in Rome after the departure of Leclerc from Venice in 1621 or 1622. Della Vecchia probably worked in Padovanino's workshop after his return from Rome in 1625 or 1626. Padovanino, whose style was strongly rooted in early-16th-century Venetian art, likely played an important role in instilling in della Vecchia a great interest in 16th-century painting in Venice and the Veneto. The first documents in which the name