Czére Andrea szerk.: A Szépművészeti Múzeum közleményei 105. (Budapest, 2006)
ANDREA CZÉRE: Giambettino Cignaroli's Drawing of the Virgin and Child in the Budapest Collection: On the Third Centenary of the Artist's Birth
GIAMBETTINO CIGNAROLTS DRAWING OF THE VIRGIN AND CHILD IN THE BUDAPEST COLLECTION ON THE THIRD CENTENARY OF THE ARTIST'S BIRTH ANDREA CZERE If a prominent political position were automatically coupled with the ability to judge artistic merit, we would agree with the Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II (1765-1790) who after his visit to the studio of Giambettino Cignaroli (1706-1770) on 12 August, 1769, declared him the best painter in Europe. Not surprisingly the grateful and proud painter paid tribute to the emperor's successful visit by commemorating the event in golden letters incised on a marble plaque set on the wall of his workshop. 1 However, this event did not lead to any significant benefit for the artist —such as the acceptance of the presidential chair of the Viennese academy or a flood of commissions —since he died the following year. Although Cignaroli had received numerous commissions from several European courts including that of the Hapsburgs, he never sought to become a court painter. 2 A couple of months after his death, his friend, Ippolito Bevilaqua wrote his biography in which, with understandable partiality, he declared the painter to be "a rare gift of heaven" ("raro dono del cielo").' Girolamo Pompei also wrote about him that he was a painter as equally celebrated as the Greek Apelles. 4 We are gradually approaching a point of view which is valid even today wdien we cite the opinion of Antonio Balestra, Cignaroli's mentor, according to whom his student had a unique talent for drawing and with the exception of Pietro Rotari was unparalleled in the Verona of his time.Research has not yet provided a complete picture of eighteenth-century Italian art/' While the high esteem of Venetian painting dates back decades, the significance of Roman art, among others has started to develop more realistically only as a result of research work carried out over the last two and a half decades, while literature devoted little attention to
