COSTA, GIOVANNI (1826-1903), Italian painter, was born in Rome. He became known as a landscape-painter of remarkable originality, and of great influence in the return to minute observation of nature. He had many English friends and followers, notably Matthew Ridley Corbet and Lord Carlisle, and was closely associated with Corot and the Barbizon school. An exhibition of his pictures was held in London in 1904, and he is represented in the Tate Gallery. He died in Rome in 1903.
See Madame Agresti's Giovanni Costa (1904)•