Pieter Mulier (Moyn) the Younger, who became known under the name of Pietro Tempesta or Cavalier Tempesta, was born in 1637 in Haarlem. He died in 1701 in Milan. He was first trained by his father, Pieter Mulier the Elder, who specialised in seascapes. After a sojourn in Antwerp (1655 or 1656) Pieter the Younger went to Rome, where he lived continuously until 1668; later he was also active in Genoa, in Milan (1685–1701) and in a number of other cities in Emilia, the Veneto and in Lombardy. Pieter Mulier the Younger was called “Tempesta” because of the motifs of his seascapes, all of which show storms at sea, ships in danger and shipwrecks, but he also painted landscapes, which are sometimes above all backgrounds for human figures and animals. The style of Tempesta’s seascapes owed much to the style of his father, Pieter Mulier the Elder, and that of the Dutch and Flemish marine painters, like Jan Blanckerhoff, Ludolf Backhuysen and Mathieu van Plattenberg. In his landscapes Tempesta copied and adapted motifs which had been popularised in Rome by Gaspard Dughet, Salvatore Rosa and Pietro Testa.
Lit.: Marcel Röthlisberger-Bianco, Cavalier Pietro Tempesta and His Time, Delaware-Haarlem 1970; Seicento, Vol. III, Milano 1989 (biogr. Maria Christina Rodeschini Galati).