Giacinto Gigante

Giacinto Francesco Paolo Gigante (born July 11, 1806 in Naples , † November 29, 1876 ibid) was an Italian painter, draftsman and graphic artist. He belonged to the Posillipo school .

Life

View of Naples from La Conocchia (undated)

Gigante was born in 1806 as the son of the painter Gaetano Gigante and his wife Annamaria Fatati. Gigante learned from his father at an early age. In 1820 he studied for a few months with the painter Jakob Wilhelm Huber , who taught him the basics of drawing and probably also trained him in using watercolors. At the same time, the young painter taught himself the techniques of lithography and etching . Around 1822/23 Gigante worked in an executive function for the Officio Topografico and was involved in the development of an urban area plan for Naples. In 1821 Gigante moved to the workshop of the Dutch landscape painter Anton Sminck van Pitloo . After an extensive bundle of drawings, the first oil painting was a view of Lake Lucrino in 1824 . Through Pitloo, Gigante developed a view of the landscape that was independent of the Neapolitan vedute painting of the 17th and 18th centuries and took on suggestions from artists such as William Turner and Johan Christian Clausen Dahl , who were in Naples during these years.

In 1826 Gigante went to Rome, where he later stayed several times. For a short time he worked for the Swiss painter Johann Jakob Wolfensberger . From 1829 to 1832 Gigante was involved in the three-volume work "Viaggio Pittorico nel Regno delle due Sicilie" "by Raffaele Liberatore and made drawings of sights of the Kingdom of Sicily, which were then lithographed. In 1832 he married Eloisa Vianelli, the sister of his friend Achille Vianelli , with whom he had studied under Huber in 1820. The couple had eight daughters.

At the end of the 1820s, Gigante established close contacts with the Russian aristocracy, which earned him numerous commissions. For Emperor Nicholas I, the Italian painted the two large formats La veduta di Napoli da Villa Graven and La Tomba di Virgilio . For the empress he painted an album containing the most famous landmarks and an oil painting. After Naples rose against the Bourbons , Gigante went to Sorrento in 1848 . His style changed here and the landscapes were increasingly influenced by Romanticism.

In 1850 Gigante got in touch with the Bourbon court and made some drawings for the Austrian Archduchess Maria Theresa . By Ferdinand I , he was elevated to Knight of the Royal Order and taught from 1851, the princesses in painting. Until 1855 he took part in numerous trips by the royal family. Numerous watercolors were created with a romantic view of the landscape, which marked a final departure from vedute painting.

In the 1850s he created numerous masterful watercolors with motifs from Pompeii . In the 1860s, Gigante said goodbye to landscape depictions and mainly painted interior views of Neapolitan churches, including La Cappella di San Gennaro nel Duomo di Napoli , which was shown at the 1867 World Exhibition in Paris. Gigantes' late work is characterized by the dissolution of the brushstroke in favor of short dots of color that blur architectural details and emphasize the overall atmospheric impression of the interior.

literature

• Gigante, Giacinto . In: Ulrich Thieme , Fred. C. Willis (Ed.): General lexicon of visual artists from antiquity to the present . Founded by Ulrich Thieme and Felix Becker . tape 14 : Giddens-Gress . EA Seemann, Leipzig 1921, p. 12 ( Textarchiv - Internet Archive ).
• Giacinto Gigante . In: General Artist Lexicon . The visual artists of all times and peoples (AKL). Volume 53, Saur, Munich a. a. 2007, ISBN 978-3-598-22793-6 , p. 454.
• Fernanda Capobianco: Giacinto Gigante (= Mensili d'arte Volume 15). Edizioni dei Soncino, Soncino 1994.

Web links

Commons : Giacinto Gigante  - collection of images, videos and audio files