Cipriani, GIAMBATTISTA

Cipriani, GIAMBATTISTA, history-painter and designer, was born at Florence in 1727, of an old Pistoja family. He received some instruction from Hugford, a Florentine painter of English parentage, and he studied for three years in Rome. In 1755 he was induced by Sir William Chambers and Wilton the sculptor to settle in London, where his graceful drawings, which were reproduced by the graver of Bartolozzi, gained great popularity, and exercised a favourable influence upon the English school of figure-painters. He was a member of the St Martin's Lane Academy, and in 1768 was elected a foundation member of the Royal Academy, to whose exhibitions he contributed till 1779, and whose diploma he designed in 1768. His pictures, of which some are preserved at Houghton, are less successful than his designs, being feeble, poor in colour, and with little expression. As an etcher he is known by a few plates in Hollis's Memoirs. He married in 1761 an English lady of fortune, and died at Hammersmith, 14th December 1785.