Adriano Cecioni (July 26, 1836May 23, 1886) was an Italian artist, caricaturist, and critic associated with the
Macchiaioli
The Macchiaioli () were a group of Italian painters active in Tuscany in the second half of the nineteenth century. They strayed from antiquated conventions taught by the Italian art academies, and did much of their painting outdoors in order ...
group.
Biography
He was born in
Florence
Florence ( ; ) is the capital city of the Italy, Italian region of Tuscany. It is also the most populated city in Tuscany, with 362,353 inhabitants, and 989,460 in Metropolitan City of Florence, its metropolitan province as of 2025.
Florence ...
into a middle-class family belonging to the local
gentry
Gentry (from Old French , from ) are "well-born, genteel and well-bred people" of high social class, especially in the past. ''Gentry'', in its widest connotation, refers to people of good social position connected to Landed property, landed es ...
. He began his artistic training in 1859 at the Florentine Academy under the sculptor
Aristodemo Costoli.
In that same year he fought alongside
Telemaco Signorini in the
Second Italian War of Independence
The Second Italian War of Independence, also called the Sardinian War, the Austro-Sardinian War, the Franco-Austrian War, or the Italian War of 1859 (Italian: ''Seconda guerra d'indipendenza italiana''; German: ''Sardinischer Krieg''; French: ...
.
[Steingräber & Matteucci 1984, p. 108] In 1860 he participated in a competition to provide military artworks for the Tuscan government. His submission, a maquette for a statue of
Charles Albert of Savoy, won a prize but was deemed unsatisfactory by academicians and was not commissioned.
[Oxford Art Online]
In 1863 Cecioni received a grant and went to Naples, where he was instrumental in the formation of the artists' group ''
Scuola di Resina'', which included
Giuseppe De Nittis,
Marco de Gregorio, and
Federico Rossano.
A major work of this period was his sculpture ''The Suicide'', which he exhibited at the Florence Academy in 1867.
In 1872 Cecioni spent six months in London, where he contributed a series of caricatures to ''
Vanity Fair'' magazine.
After he returned to Italy, the sculptures he produced for the rest of his career were mainly
genre works
Genre art is the pictorial representation in any of various media of scenes or events from everyday life, such as markets, domestic settings, interiors, parties, inn scenes, work, and street scenes. Such representations (also called genre works, ...
, often humorous in nature. He also painted domestic scenes. In 1884 he became Professor of Drawing at the Istituto di Magistero Femminile.
Cecioni's activities as an art critic, which began in the 1870s, consumed an increasing amount of his time in his later years. He died of a heart attack on May 23, 1886.
His work is in collections including Galleria d'arte moderna di
Palazzo Pitti
The Palazzo Pitti (), in English sometimes called the Pitti Palace, is a vast, mainly Renaissance, palace in Florence, Italy. It is situated on the south side of the River Arno, a short distance from the Ponte Vecchio. The core of the present ...
, Florence; Galleria nazionale d'arte moderna, Rome; Museo statale d'arte medievale e moderna, Arezzo; and
Pinacoteca di Brera
The Pinacoteca di Brera ("Brera Art Gallery") is the main public gallery for paintings in Milan, Italy. It contains one of the foremost collections of Italian paintings from the 13th to the 20th century, an outgrowth of the cultural program of ...
, Milan.
His writings were anthologized in ''Scritti e ricordi'' (1905).
Gallery
File:Le faccende di casa by Adriano Cecioni 1869.jpg, ''Housework'', 1869
File:La zia Erminia by Adriano Cecioni.jpg, ''Aunt Erminia'', ca. 1867/70
File:Interior with a figure by Cecioni.jpg, ''Interior with a Figure'', 1868
File:The Interrupted Game by Cecioni.jpg, ''The Interrupted Game'' (1863/67)
File:Samuel Morley, Vanity Fair, 1872-06-15.jpg, Samuel Morley. Caricature published in '' Vanity Fair'', 1872
References
Further reading
*
Broude, Norma (1987). ''The Macchiaioli: Italian Painters of the Nineteenth Century''. New Haven and London: Yale University Press.
*Steingräber, E., & Matteucci, G. (1984). ''The Macchiaioli: Tuscan Painters of the Sunlight : March 14-April 20, 1984''. New York: Stair Sainty Matthiesen in association with Matthiesen, London.
*Ward-Jackson, Philip. "Adriano Cecioni". ''Oxford Art Online''
External links
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cecioni, Adriano
1836 births
1886 deaths
Italian caricaturists
19th-century Italian painters
Italian male painters
19th-century Italian sculptors
Italian male sculptors
Vanity Fair (British magazine) artists
Accademia di Belle Arti di Firenze alumni
19th-century Italian male artists