Raffaele Mainella was an Italian painter, decorator, and architect born in Benevento in 1856 and died in Venice in 1941. He trained at the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Venice, where he distinguished himself early on by his great precision of execution and a clearly defined pictorial sensibility.

The son, grandson and great-grandson of painters, early in his career Mainella worked mainly as a painter in oils, with a particular preference was for views of Venice and its surroundings. But after a few years he decided to devote himself to watercolour, a medium in which he was highly regarded by his contemporaries. Although best known for his watercolour views of the Venetian lagoon, Mainella also produced a number of watercolours of Orientalist subjects. He travelled to Egypt in 1887 with the Swiss writer Baron von Gonzenbach, and his drawings were later used to illustrate Gonzenbach’s book Nihlfahrt.

Mainella exhibited his work frequently in Venice, notably at the Biennale of 1897, as well in Berlin, Munich and Brussels. In 1901 he was invited by Count Robert de Montesquieu to mount an exhibition of his watercolours in Paris, and later was made an honorary member of the Société des Aquarellistes.