He was born in Milan. In 1711, he moved with his family, comprising his parents, a brother and four little sisters, to the town of Brescia, where they settled in the parish of Sant'Agata. The motives behind this move are unknown. Possibly the family had relatives in Brescia. While Ceruti commenced his artistic career in the city, it is likely that his initial artistic training had already started in Milan. This training was likely not a traditional apprenticeship in the form of copying painting examples and learning the principles of composition. His first attempts at
history painting were rather clumsy, while he showed a great accomplishment in portrait and genre paintings. It is therefore likely that this initial training took place in contact with a Milan artist experienced in the latter two genres, such as the painter
Antonio Lucini. In 1717, at the age of 18, he married in Brescia Angiola Carozza, who was 10 years his senior. The couple had two children who both died in their infancy. These works were all lost or dispersed at the end of the 18th century. He also created altarpieces and Christian-themed paintings. In 1733, he fled his creditors in Brescia and moved to
Gandino. He had run up debts due to a failed investment in forest land for which he had taken out loans, which he had become unable to repay. He obtained commissions for works for the Basilica di Santa Maria Assunta in Gandino. For the cornice of the Basilica, Ceruti produced 28 paintings depicting prophets and characters from the Old Testament who are identified in the paintings. The series was not executed at the same time, and as a result, those conserved at the entrances dated 1734 are executed in a late 17th-century style, while the others, dated to 1737, show the influence of Ceruti's study of the works of Tiepolo and Sebastiano Ricci. The Basilica conserves 12 other works by Ceruti, making it his most complete cycle. In 1734, he signed and dated the
Our Lady of the Rosary for the Visitazione di Santa Maria ad Elisabetta Church. He visited Venice in 1736 at the invitation of
Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg, marshal of the Venetian Republic and an avid art collector. Ceruti painted portraits, landscapes, still lifes and scenes with paupers for the marshal. Through the marshal, he came into contact with an artistic milieu with international tastes, resulting in a profound maturation in his pictorial language. During his stay in Venice, he was further able to study the works of Venetian artists such as
Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and
Giovanni Battista Pittoni, which would influence his later works. In this period, he obtained an important commission to paint an altarpiece for the
Basilica of Saint Anthony of Padua. Ceruti probably met the young bookseller Matilde De Angelis in Schulenburg's milieu. She became his mistress, and the couple had a daughter in 1737 and two further children later. All of their offspring died at a young age. He remained married to his wife while maintaining his relationship with his mistress, with whom he moved around in different cities in northern Italy. After his stay in Venice, Ceruti went back to work in Gandino. In 1742, he moved with his mistress to his birthplace, Milan. His first wife continued to reside in Brescia. In Milan, he obtained the patronage of some of the leading families, including the Belgioioso, the Medici di Marignano and the Litta. They commissioned him to paint their portraits and pastoral idylls in which the humble classes were depicted in an Arcadian vision. He also started painting mythological subjects for which he relied on prints by Northern European artists. He received commissions from patrons in Piacenza. He painted in 1745 the
Saint Alexander of Bergamo overturns a pagan altar as an altarpiece for the church of Sant'Alessandro in Piacenza (now in the Santa Teresa di Carmelo, Piacenza). He also worked in 1750 in
Tortona, where he created a set of no less than six works with life-like figures and different subjects. One of these was inspired by an illustration of a fable by La Fontaine. In December 1762, Ceruti drafted a will in which he named his lawful wife as his sole heir, although his mistress was still alive. Three years later, he dictated a new will, in which he left his estate to his adopted son. He died in Milan on 28 August 1767 in the company of his lawful wife. ==Work==