Italian Baroque Era Painter, 1559-1613 was an Italian painter and architect of the late Mannerist and early Baroque period, trained and active in his early career in Florence, and spending the last nine years of his life in Rome. Lodovico Cardi was born at Villa Castelvecchio di Cigoli, in Tuscany, whence the name by which he is commonly known. Initially, Cigoli trained in Florence under the fervid mannerist Alessandro Allori. Later, influenced by the most prominent of the Contra-Maniera painters, Santi di Tito, as well as by Barocci, Cigoli shed the shackles of mannerism and infused his later paintings with an expressionism often lacking from 16th century Florentine painting. For example, for the Roman patron, Massimo Massimi, he painted an Ecce Homo[1] (now in Palazzo Pitti). Supposedly unbenknownst to any of the painters, two other prominent contemporary painters, Passignano and Caravaggio, had been requested canvases on the same theme. It is unclear if they are completely independent. Cigoli's painting seems to have been made with knowledge of Caravaggio's canvas; however, while Cigoli's work lacks the power of Caravaggio's naturalism, the background shade and sparse foreground shows how much he was moving away from crowded Florentine historical paintings. This work was afterwards taken by Bonaparte to the Louvre, and was restored to Florence in 1815. One of his early paintings was of Cain slaying Abel. He then gained the employ of the Grand-Duke in some works for the Pitti Palace, where he painted a Venus and Satyr and a Sacrifice of Isaac. Other important pictures are St. Peter Healing the Lame Man in St Peter's; Conversion of St. Paul in the church of San Paolo fuori le Mura, and a Story of Psyche in a fresco incorporated in the decorative scheme of the Villa Borghese; a Martyrdom of Stephen, which earned him the name of the "Florentine Correggio", a Stigmata of St. Francis at Florence. Cigoli was made a Knight of Malta at the request of Pope Paul III. Cigoli, a close personal friend of Galileo Galilei, painted a last fresco in the dome of the Pauline chapel of the church of Santa Maria Maggiore in Rome, depicting the Madonna standing upon a pock-marked lunar orb. This is the first extant example of Galileo's discoveries about the physical nature of the moon (as he himself drew it in Sidereus Nuncius) having penetrated the visual arts practice of his day. Until this image, the moon in pictures of the Virgin had always been mythical and smooth, perfectly spherical as described by Platonic & Ptolemaic tradition.   Related Paintings of CIGOLI :. | Ecce Homo f | St.Francis in Prayer | Self-Portrait | St Francis Receives the Stigmata | Joseph and Potiphar's Wife |
Related Artists:
Wilhelm Steinhausen
1846-1924
Deak-Ebner, Lajos
Hungarian Painter, 1850-1934
Adrian Vanson
Adrian Vanson (died c. 1602) was court portrait painter to James VI of Scotland. Adrian succeeded Arnold Bronckorst as court painter in Scotland in May 1584, and his appointment was subsequently confirmed by royal letter on 20 August 1584. Adrian Vanson was paid £8-10s in June 1581 for two pictures sent to Theodore Beza. A letter by James VI's former tutor Peter Young accompanied pictures of John Knox and George Buchanan sent to Geneva in November 1579 for the woodcuts in Beza's Icones (1580). The Scottish portraits arrived too late for the book, and the woodcuts of Knox and a James VI, thought to be by Vanson, were first published in Simon Goulart's edition of the Icones in 1581. The picture of George Buchanan, which was never published in Beza's Icones, but may have appeared in other later works, is attributed to Bronckorst. Knox from Beza's Icones, after Adrian VansonVanson also painted ceremonial spears and banners for the coronation of Anne of Denmark. When he was made a burgess of Edinburgh, it was hoped he would teach his craft to apprentices. He may have been 'Lord Seton's painter', who was recorded drawing portraits for coins at the mint in Edinburgh. There was a un-named Flemish painter working on the king's portrait at Stirling Castle in May 1579. This may have been Vanson or Bronckorst. According to the inventories of the Earl of Leicester, he had a portrait of the 'young king of Scots' in 1580, which may have been another copy of this picture. Leicester sent his own portrait to James VI, painted on canvas by Hubbard in 1583. Attributed portraits include James VI; Anne of Denmark; Patrick Lyon, Lord Glamis; Sir Thomas Kennedy of Culzean; Agnes Douglas, Countess of Argyll. Vanson's James VI of circa 1585 survives at Edinburgh castle. In May 1586 a French ambassador in Scotland, the Baron d'Esneval, promised to get Mary, Queen of Scots a copy of a recent portrait of James VI from the only painter in Edinburgh. There had been rumours of an embassy to Denmark to discuss the king's marriage in April 1586. It is thought the picture at Edinburgh Castle was made by Vanson for this embassy or a similar purpose.