Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli (Torino 1730 - 1800)

Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli (Turin 1730-1800) Animated landscape with view of the Cappuccini hill with the old lead dome Animated landscape with waterfall 18th century Oil on canvas, 98 x 92 cm CIGNAROLI, Vittorio Amedeo Gaetano. - Son of the painter Scipione and Marianna Caretti, he was born in Turin around 1730. The date of birth is established based on the death certificate that says he was "70 years old". A. Baudi di Vesme (Schede Vesme) clarified the confusion that arose around his name, whereby his person had previously been split into that of Vittorio Amedeo and Gaetano. According to family tradition, C. trained with his father from whom he absorbed Venetian culture, but with a different orientation. A more affected taste and Arcadian nostalgia distinguish C. from his father, with whom he collaborated; his somewhat cloying manner, but supported by assured skill, met with extraordinary success at the Savoy court and among the Piedmontese aristocracy. It is precisely with Vittorio Amedeo that the Cignaroli workshop greatly expanded, welcoming a quantity of help and thus making it still difficult to distinguish between the autograph production and that of the workshop. C.'s work is documented from 1749 to 1794. A comprehensive register is reported in Schede Vesme, to which reference is made for data relating to the activity carried out in the castles of Venaria, Moncalieri and Rivoli, of which all trace has been lost (many paintings passed on the antiquarian market) following the devastation and spoliation of those royal residences. From 1749 to 1758 he is mentioned for work in the royal palace (a fire screen) and especially for an initial group of paintings for the castle of Venaria. In 1762 he was appointed prior of the Company of S. Luca in Turin. The following year he obtained the first commission for the Stupinigi hunting lodge, which was to become the site of one of his most important interventions: four overdoors with Hunting views and various figures, still in place in the drawing room of the eastern apartment. The decoration, previously in the Peiretti di Condove palace in Turin (now in a private collection in Paris), dates from 1779. In 1771 he began the series of Deer hunts for Stupinigi, among his best-known works, destined for the squires' hall in the king's apartment and still in place: this is a total of nine canvases, executed between 1771-72 and 1778, with the wide collaboration of assistants. In these, the purposes and limits of C.'s painting are clearly evident, aimed at keeping alive an arcadico world that has now been superseded and which is resolved in the ways of a mannered decoration. In 1778 C. became professor in the renovated Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture of Turin. In 1782 Vittorio Amedeo III appointed him "our painter in landscapes and woodlands". In the royal palace, where he is mentioned for payments in 1788-89, four overdoors with views of the Castle of Moncalieri, the Monte dei Cappuccini and two unidentifiable landscapes remain in the Madama Felicita apartment (U. Chierici-R. Amerio Tardito, Pal. reale..., Madama Felicita Apartment, Turin 1971, pages 5, 9, 14). Important is the group of twenty-five paintings in the Civic Museum of Ancient Art of Turin, some of which reveal the study of the Dutch and Flemish masters of the royal collections. Of these, two are cartoons for tapestries: Peasants and a juggler who makes a fake bear dance, around 1760, and Young people having breakfast on the grass with two peasant women from the series Country scenes, translated into tapestry by F. Demignot (for other tapestries of the Turin manufacture for which C. provided the cartoons and which are preserved in the Civic Museum of Turin and at the Quirinale in Rome, see M. Viale Ferrero, in Mostra del Barocco Piemontese, II, Tapestries). The others are landscapes and sacred scenes, also, like the previous two, in oil on canvas, except for five landscapes in gouache on paper which are distinguished by cold tones, quite unusual in Cignaroli's painting. Two other tapestries based on his designs (Landscape with two figures, Landscape with jugglers and beggar) are in Palazzo Carignano. In the Galleria Sabauda there is a probable Self-portrait with a globe, dating back to the 1960s (N. Gabrielli, La Gall. Sabauda, Maestri italiani, Turin 1971, fig. 487). In Palazzo Chiablese in Turin, in the small mirror room, there remain four overdoors with Stories from the Old Testament which are considered (Griscri, in Mostra del Barocco Piem., II, Pittura, page 110) from the late period. Other works by C. are: four River landscapes in the castle of Agliè (not to be confused with those of Scipione), six Landscapes with hunting scenes in the villa of Carpeneto in La Loggia near Turin and numerous landscapes in European private collections. Two Hunting scenes are kept in the Museum of Fine Arts in Budapest (Bull. du Musée hongrois des Beaux-Arts, 1972, n. 39, page 100, ill. 80 s.). In 1766 he married Rosalia Ladatte, daughter of the sculptor Francesco, a painter, who also became his collaborator and died in 1792 (I. Nepote, in Schede Vesme, page 317). Angelo, one of their sons, was a painter. C. died in Turin on February 17, 1800. Bibl.: G. Chevalley, The architects, the archit. and the decoraz. of the Piedmontese villas of the XVIII sec., Turin 1912, pages 64, 69, 117, 142, 151; G. Delogu, Minor Ligurian, Lombard and Piedmontese painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Venice 1931, pages 238241; V. Moschini, Italian painting of the eighteenth century, Florence 1931, page 35; L. Rosso, Painting and sculpture of the '700 in Turin, Turin 1934, pages 43, 51; R. Buscaroli, Landscape painting in Italy, Bologna 1935, pages 385 s.; G. Lorenzetti, Italian painting of the eighteenth century, Novara 1942, page XLI; A M. Brizio, Ilcastello del Valentino. The paintings, Turin 1949, page 230; V. Golzio, Seicento e Settecento, Turin 1950, page 792; M. Bernardi, The Stupinigi hunting lodge, Turin 1958, tables XI, XII, XIII, XIV; L. Mallè, The figurative arts in Piedmont, Turin 1961, pages 393, 396 s., 405, 428; Schede Vesme, I, Turin 1963, pages 317- 19 (with bibl.); Exhibition of the Piedmontese Baroque (catalog), Turin 1963, I, La Mostra, table 17; II, Pittura, pages 15 s., 110-113, tables 170-183; Tapestries, pages 18 s., tables 25-27; III, Furniture and carvings, table 260; L. Mallè, The paintings of the Museum of Ancient Art, Turin 1963, pages 40-46; A. Pedrini, Villas of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries in Piedmont, Turin 1965, page 202; Furniture Museum, Stupinigi, Turin 1966, pages 82, 88, 138, 139; A. Verdoia Oberto, V.A.C., Savona 1967 (with bibl.); L. Mallè, Stupinigi, Turin 1968, pages 196-200, 236, 237, 446-449 (with bibl.); Gall. G Caretto, Exhibition "La Pitt. in Piemonte nel XVIII sec." (catalog), Turin 1977, nn. 4-17 (continues in the error of splitting the personality of C.); Museums of Piedmont. Restored works of art... (catalog), edited by G. Romano, Turin 1978, page 165; Figurative cultura and architett. in the States of the King of Sardinia - 1773-1861 (catalog), edited by E. Castelnuovo-M. Rosci, Turin 1980, pages 1420 s., s.v.; U. Thieme-F. Becker, Künstlerlexikon, VI, pages 587, s. De TRECCANI.IT