Biography

Italian painter, born in a poor family. He began his studies in 1841 in Udine, then he attended for four years the Academy in Venice where he was a pupil of Ludovico Lipparini, Michelangelo Grigoletti (1801-1870) and Odorico Politi (1785-1846).

In Venice he was the restorer of the collections of the Duchess of Berry. In his David (1847, Museum of Modern Art, Ca'Pesaro, Venice) classicism and academism blended, while in the Our Lady of Sorrows (1847-48 Church of San Pietro in Volti, Cividale) the influence of Grigoletti is evident, though without the immediacy and spontaneity of his teacher. In his later religious works Dugoni followed the tradition of early Tuscan Mannerists.

Though he was conventional and academic in religious paintings, he became a skilled portraitist executing numerous successful portraits for bourgeois clients.

Dugoni died at the age of 47, a victim of alcohol and madness. During the First World War many of his works were destroyed in Cividale.