Biography

Italian painter. He was the leading painter in 18th-century Verona. His works have mainly religious themes and he is especially known for his paintings of the Virgin and Child. The works are overwhelmingly spiritual, but frequently include lively incidents, such as playing cherubs, and they possess a tranquil quality, perhaps a reflection of the artist's personality. Giambettino was the only child of Leonardo Cignaroli and Rosa Lugiati, but through his father's second marriage, to Maddelena Vicentini, he had six half-siblings, among whom were the painters Gian Domenico (1724-93) and Giuseppe (Fra Felice) Cignaroli (1727-96) and the sculptor Diomiro (1717-1803), whose oldest son, Gaetano (1747-1826), was also a sculptor. A Piedmontese branch of the family produced several landscape painters. Giambettino's early education was in the humanities; he was particularly adept at rhetoric and developed a lifelong interest in Latin literature and in Greek and Roman antiquity.