Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli (Torino 1730-1800)

Animated Landscape 18th century   Oil on panel, 47cm x 58cm x 3.5 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 on the basis of the death certificate which 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 precious taste and Arcadian nostalgia in fact distinguish C. from his father, with whom he collaborated; the rather cloying manners, but supported by sure skill in the trade, met with extraordinary success at the Savoy court and the Piedmontese aristocracy. It is precisely with Vittorio Amedeo that the Cignaroli workshop expanded greatly, welcoming quantity of helpers and thus still making it difficult to distinguish between the autograph production and that of the workshop. C.'s work is documented from 1749 to 1794. An exhaustive list is reported in Schede Vesme, which is referred to 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 antiques 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 above all for a first 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 lounge of the east wing apartment. In 1779 there was the decoration, already in Palazzo Peiretti di Condove in Turin (now in a private collection in Paris). In 1771 he began the series of Stag Hunts for Stupinigi, among his best-known works, intended for the squires' hall in the king's apartment and still in place: it is a total of nine canvases, executed between 1771-72 and 1778, with extensive collaboration from helpers. In them, the purposes and limits of C.'s painting are clearly revealed, aimed at keeping alive an Arcadian world that has now been surpassed and which resolves itself in the ways of mannerist decoration. In 1778 C. became a professor in the renovated Royal Academy of Painting and Sculpture in Turin. In 1782 Vittorio Amedeo III appointed him "our painter in landscapes and woodlands". In the royal palace, where he is cited 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 apartment of Madama Felicita (U. Chierici-R. Amerio Tardito, Pal. reale..., Appartamento di Madama Felicita, Turin 1971, pp. 5, 9, 14). Important is the group of twenty-five paintings in the Civic Museum of Ancient Art in 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 from the Turin manufactory for which C. supplied the cartoons and which are kept in the Civic Museum of Turin and at the Quirinale in Rome, see M. Viale Ferrero, in Exhibition of the Piedmontese Baroque, II, Tapestries). The others are landscapes and sacred scenes, also, like the previous two, oil on canvas, except for five gouache landscapes on paper which stand out for their 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. At the Galleria Sabauda there is a probable Autontratto with a globe, datable 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 believed (Griscri, in Mostra del Barocco piem., II, Pittura, p. 110) to be 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 Budapest Museum of Fine Arts (Bull. du Musée hongrois des Beaux-Arts, 1972, n. 39, p. 100, ill. 80 s.). He married Rosalia Ladatte in 1766, daughter of the sculptor Francesco, painter, who also became his collaborator and died in 1792 (I. Nepote, in Schede Vesme, p. 317). Of their sons, Angelo was a painter. C. died in Turin on 17 February 1800. Bibl.: G. Chevalley, The architects, the archit. and the decoraz. of the Piedmontese villas of the 18th century, Turin 1912, pp. 64, 69, 117, 142, 151; G. Delogu, Minor Ligurian, Lombard, Piedmontese painters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Venice 1931, pp. 238241; V. Moschini, Italian eighteenth-century painting, Florence 1931, p. 35; L. Rosso, Painting and sculpture of the 1700s in Turin, Turin 1934, pp. 43, 51; R. Buscaroli, Landscape painting in Italy, Bologna 1935, pp. 385 s.; G. Lorenzetti, Italian painting of the eighteenth century, Novara 1942, p. XLI; A M. Brizio, The castle of Valentino. The paintings, Turin 1949, p. 230; V. Golzio, Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Turin 1950, p. 792; M. Bernardi, The Stupinigi hunting lodge, Turin 1958, plates XI, XII, XIII, XIV; L. Mallé, The figurative arts in Piedmont, Turin 1961, pp. 393, 396 s ., 405, 428; Schede Vesme, I, Turin 1963, pp. 317-19 (with bibl.); Exhibition of the Piedmontese Baroque (catalog), Turin 1963, I, The Exhibition, plate 17; II, Painting, pp. 15 f., 110-113, plates 170-183; Tapestries, pp. 18 f., plates 25-27; III, Furniture and carvings, plate 260; L. Mallé, Paintings from the Museum of Ancient Art, Turin 1963, pp. 40-46; A. Pedrini, Villas of the 17th and 18th centuries in Piedmont, Turin 1965, p. 202; Furniture Museum, Stupinigi, Turin 1966, pp. 82, 88, 138, 139; A. Verdoia Oberto, V.A.C., Savona 1967 (with bibl.); L. Mallé, Stupinigi, Turin 1968, pp. 196-200, 236, 237, 446-449 (with bibl.); Gall. G Caretto, Exhibition "Painting in Piedmont in the 18th century"(catalog), Turin 1977, nn. 4-17 (continues the error of splitting the personality of C.); Museums of Piedmont. Restored works of art... (catalog), edited by G. Romano, Turin 1978, p. 165; Figurative culture and architecture in the States of the King of Sardinia - 1773-1861 (catalog), edited by E. Castelnuovo-M. Rosci, Turin 1980, pp. 1420 s., s.v.; U. Thieme-F. Becker, Künstlerlexikon, VI, pp.587, s. De TRECCANI.IT    
Measures H x L x P 47 cm x 58 cm x 3,5 cm