Lot 112: VITTORIO AMEDEO CIGNAROLI

VITTORIO AMEDEO CIGNAROLI TURIN 1730-1800 A PASTORAL LANDSCAPE WITH ELEGANT FIGURES RESTING BY A LAKE, A VILLA ON A HILL BEYOND; A ROCKY LANDSCAPE WITH PASTORAL FIGURES RESTING BY A WATERFALL Quantity: 2 a pair, both oil on canvas each: 130.8 by 139 cm.; 51 1/2 by 54 3/4 in.

Anonymous sale, Rome, Finarte, 20 November 1990, lot 213.

This pair of decorative river landscapes are entirely characteristic of Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli who was active in Piedmont during the second half of the 18th century and specialised in painting landscapes for the Turinese nobility; including the Duke of Savoy, Carlo Emanuele II. His works in the Castello della Venaria and his overdoors for the Palazzina Reale di Caccia at Stupinigi, the Duke of Savoy's hunting lodge just outside Turin, are among the artist's better-known works. When these two paintings were last at auction the catalogue remarked that the landscape in the first canvas could be compared to that in A landscape with a view of Moncalieri in a private collection, Turin.υ1 The pastoral figures resting by the waterfall in the foreground of the latter painting are typical of the staffage to be found in Cignaroli's landscapes and recall, amongst others, those in the artist's paintings for Stupinigi.

1. Exhibited in Mostra del Barocco Piemontese, 1963, cat. no. 331, reproduced plate 177 b.