Born in the island of Murano (Venice) on August 31, 1913, Del Pero studied Fine Arts in Venice. After his diploma, he started a cabinet-maker activity which was to last over sixty years. In 1933 he began taking pictures amateurishly with a 6x9 Zeiss Ikon, but it was only in the mid 50s, thanks to encouragement by his friends Giancarlo Angeloni and Giuseppe Bruno, that photography became his constant and deep interest. He joined La Gondola during one of the Circle’s most brilliant periods and left it with a traumatic separation to found the Circolo Il Ponte with other ex-members.

In the meantime he was participating in countless competitions and collecting awards (over eight hundred) all over Europe, in France, Spain, Belgium, Germany, Russia, and receiving every possible honour in Italian photography. Notwithstanding his success, Del Pero stayed reserved and unpretentious: he never moved on to became a professional photographer, and his one-man shows were few and far between.

This prevented his fame from spreading and his work from becoming widely known to public and critics.

Del Pero died in Mestre in 1987: two years later the Murano Cultural Association organized a retrospective of his work with an extensive catalogue.

In 1996 Mrs Lidia, his widow, donated his whole photographic fund to the Circolo La Gondola. The following year in Padova La Gondola presented a comprehensive exhibition which was met by an extraordinary success.

Informatic logging of Del Pero’s work is presently being carried out and near completion by the Historical Archive of the Circolo La Gondola.