Giambettino Cignaroli

• 1. Introduction

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  Giambettino Cignaroli was an Italian painter born in Verona on the 4th of July 1706, and he died in the same city on the 1st of December 1770. The final entry in the list of his works carries that year, 1770. It bears the title Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart at the age of 14 in Verona. A painter who spent his life in the Veneto thus ends his surviving record with a portrait tied to a teenage musician passing through his home town. Who trained him? What did he paint for churches, villas and collectors? And what did he leave behind in the city where he was born and died?

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• 2. Masters and Style

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  Two teachers shaped Cignaroli: Santo Prunato and Antonio Balestra. He studied under both and then worked mostly in the Veneto, the region of northeastern Italy around Venice and Verona. His career falls in a transitional moment for European art. The label attached to him is Rococo and early Neoclassic, which places him between the ornate, playful taste of the first style and the return to ancient subjects in the second. That shift in taste is visible in what patrons later asked him to paint.

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• 3. Churches and Villas

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  In 1737, Cignaroli painted the Martyr of Saints Felix and Fortunatus for Bergamo Cathedral. The cathedral later received a second canvas from him, Saint Procolus Visiting Saints Fermus and Rusticus, dated 1744. That same year he made Virgin and Child With Saints Jerome and Alexander, which hung in the Chiesa dell'Ospedale in Bergamo. Religious work was only part of his output. At Villa Pompei in Illasi, near Verona, he painted Apollo and Marsyas in 1739 and the Sacrifice of Iphigenia in 1741. Both draw on Greek myth. Saint Helena, also from 1741, is now in the Castelvecchio in Verona. In 1748 he painted Aurora for Casa Fattori in Verona. Other works are recorded without dates, including Death of Rachel, now in the Accademia in Venice, the Sacrifice of Isaac, and The Travels of Moses. A patron in Lombardy would soon ask for something different again.

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• 4. The Count's Commission

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  Count Karl von Firmian governed Lombardy for Austria and collected antiquities. He commissioned two canvases from Cignaroli, both drawn from the ancient Greek and Roman world. One was the Death of Cato, painted in 1759. The other was the Death of Socrates, which the list of his works also dates to 1759. Episodes from antiquity were a subject that Neoclassic painters preferred. Painting them for a collector of ancient objects placed Cignaroli squarely within that movement. Both subjects centre on a famous man facing his own death, which gave the artist two solemn scenes to stage. By the next decade, his reputation in Verona would carry a formal title.

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• 5. The Academy and Pupils

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  In December 1764, Cignaroli became director of the academy of painting and sculpture in Verona. The institution was afterwards known by his own name, the Accademia Cignaroli. Teaching was clearly central to his legacy. His pupils included Maria Suppioti Ceroni, Giovanni Battista Lorenzi, Saverio Dalla Rosa, Domenico Mondini and Domenico Pedarzoli. Another was Christopher Unterberger, whose name suggests a student who came from beyond the Italian painting tradition. The source calls these pupils only a selection among many. The academy's name outlasted its director, though his own family also played a part in carrying on his craft.

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• 6. A Family of Artists

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  Giovanni Domenico Cignaroli, Giambettino's brother, also worked as a painter. Giambettino was born into a family of artists, so the trade was something he inherited as much as chose. His uncle Leonardo Seniore belonged to the earlier generation. Two cousins, Martino and Pietro, were his contemporaries in the family business. After his death, the tradition continued through his children, who took up art in turn.

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