In painting, Balestra was staid and reactionary. Wittkower[4] quotes the distaste of Balestra in 1733 for the tendency of then-modern painters to deviate from enshrined standards of academic painting:
All the present evil derives from the pernicious habit, generally accepted, of working from the imagination without having first learned how to draw after good models and compose in accordance with good maxims. No longer does one see young artists studying the antique; on the contrary, we have come to a point where such study is derided as useless and obnoxious.
He painted a Virgin and Infant, with Saints Ignatius and Stanislaus Kostka for the church of Sant'Ignazio at Bologna. He also painted for churches of Venice, Vicenza, Padua, Brescia, and Verona. In prints, he etched a Head of a Warrior, Virgin Mary and Infant in the Clouds, with Two Soldiers; Vignette, with two figures holding a Flag of Verona, and a Portrait of an Architect
Wittkower, Rudolph (1980). Art and Architecture in Italy, 1600-1750. Penguin Books. pp. 461, 483–484.
Lilli Ghio - Edi Baccheschi, Antonio Balestra, Ed. Bolis, 1989
U. Ruggeri, Nuove opere documentate di Antonio Balestra, in Pittura veneziana dal Quattrocento al Settecento: studi di storia dell'arte in onore di Egidio Martini, a cura di G. M. Pilo, Venezia 1999
G. Fossaluzza, Antonio Arrigoni "pittore in istoria", tra Molinari, Ricci, Balestra e Pittoni, in "Saggi e memorie di storia dell'arte", 21, 1997
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