Painter. Giovanni Battista Casanova received notoriety as an 18th century Italian painter, who became the director of the Dresden Art Academy in Germany. Born third in a family of six, he had two infamous brothers. Both of his parents were actors. His oldest brother, Giacomo Casanova, was known for being an author, an adventurer along with his many very public affairs with numerous women. The word "Casanova" is used today to describe a man notorious for seducing women. His middle brother, Francesco Giuseppe Casanova, was a painter who specialized in landscape and battlefield paintings and was a court painter in Venice, making him monitory successful, yet later died in poverty. His teachers were well-known painters Louis Sylvestre in Paris, Giovanni Battista Piazzetta in Rome, and in Germany Christian Wihelm Ernst and Anton Raphael Mengs. His brother Francesco traveled to Germany with him. In 1752 he and Mengs traveled to Rome together, becoming colleagues for ten years. For the King of Naples, he drew Pompeji and Herculaneum. He painted a portrait of Pope Clement XIII. He became an accomplished artist in pencil and crayon as well as designing dinner plates when an income was needed. While in Rome, he copied Roman masterpieces, and for these counterfeit pieces, he had trouble with the law, thus returned to Germany. In December of 1764, he returned to Dresden and became a co-founder of Dresden Art Academy and from 1776, professor of art theory at the Dresden Art Academy. In 1770 he published his textbook on ancient monuments, "Discorso sopra gli antichi e vari monumenti loro." His painting course was completed in 1788 but remained unpublished. The same year he returned to Germany, he married, the couple had several children, and she shares his gravesite. Of the three infamous brothers, he is the only one that has an actually known last resting place. One of his most noted students was Angelica Kauffmann. She was one of the two women, who was a founding member of the Royal Academy in London in 1768. Another one of his former students Franz Pettrich designed the tomb.