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{{short description|Italian painter and architect (1559–1613)}}
{{For|the Italian village in Tuscany|Cigoli, San Miniato}}
[[File:Ludovico Cardi 9.jpg|thumb|Cigoli, self-portrait]]
[[Image:Isaac Cigoli.jpg|thumb|300px|''The Sacrifice of Isaac'', by Ludovico Cigoli, c.&nbsp;1607]]
'''Lodovico''' or '''Ludovico Cardi''' (21 September 1559 – 8 June 1613),<ref name=":0">{{cite web|last=Chappell|first=Miles L.|title=Cigoli, Lodovico|url=http://www.oxfordartonline.com/subscriber/article/grove/art/T017762|work=Grove Art Online. Oxford Art Online.|publisher=Oxford University Press|access-date=September 10, 2013}}</ref> also known as '''Cigoli''', was an Italian painter and architect of the late [[Mannerism|Mannerist]] and early [[Baroque]] period, trained and active in his early career in [[Florence]], and spending the last nine years of his life in [[Rome]].
==Biography==
Lodovico Cardi was born at Villa Castelvecchio in [[Cigoli, San Miniato|Cigoli]], [[Tuscany]], whence the name by which he is commonly known. Initially, Cigoli trained in Florence under the fervid mannerist [[Alessandro Allori]], and studied the works of [[Michelangelo]], [[Antonio da Correggio|Correggio]], [[Andrea del Sarto]] and [[Pontormo]].{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}} Later, influenced by the most prominent of the "[[Counter-Maniera|Counter-''Maniera'']]" painters, [[Santi di Tito]], as well as by [[Federico Barocci|Barocci]], Cigoli shed the shackles of mannerism and infused his later paintings with an expressionism often lacking from 16th-century Florentine painting.
For the Roman patron, Massimo Massimi, he painted an ''[[Ecce Homo]]''<ref>[http://www.wga.hu/html/c/cigoli/eccehomo.html Ecce Homo by CIGOLI<!-- Bot generated title -->]</ref> (now in [[Palazzo Pitti]]). Supposedly unbeknownst to any of the painters, two other prominent contemporary painters, [[Domenico Passignano|Passignano]] and [[Caravaggio]], had been requested [[Ecce Homo (Caravaggio, Genoa)|canvases on the same theme]]. This work was afterwards taken by [[Napoleon]] to the [[Louvre]], and was restored to Florence in 1815.
One of his early paintings was of ''Cain slaying Abel''. He then gained the employ of the  Grand-Duke in some works for the
[[Pitti Palace]], where he painted a ''Venus and Satyr'' and a ''Sacrifice of Isaac''.
Other important pictures are ''St. Peter Healing the Lame Man'' in [[St. Peter's Basilica|St Peter's]]; an unfinished ''Burial of St. Paul'' in the church of [[San Paolo fuori le Mura]],<ref>Baglione, Le Nove Chiese,  639, p. 62</ref> and a ''Story of Psyche'' in a fresco incorporated in the decorative scheme of the [[Villa Borghese]]; a ''Martyrdom of Stephen'', which earned him the name of the "Florentine [[Correggio]]", and a ''Stigmata of St. Francis'' at Florence. Shortly before his death, Cigoli was made a [[Knights Hospitaller|Knight of Malta]] at the request of [[Pope Paul V]].{{sfn|Chisholm|1911}}<ref>Næss, Atle (2005). ''Galileo Galilei, When the World Stood Still''. Berlin: Springer. p. 106. {{ISBN|3540219617}}.</ref>
As stated by the prominent 17th-century painter, Andrea Sacchi, Cigoli's, ''St Peter Healing the Lame Man'' came to be recognized as the third most beautiful painting in Rome after Raphael's ''Transfiguration'' and Domenichino's ''The Last Communion of St Jerome''. Cigoli's fame and influence, even prior to coming to Rome, was of such a degree that the Florentine ambassador to the city greeted the artist on his arrival to the Eternal City. In Baldanucci's ''Notizie'' or lives of the artists, Cigoli is the only artist, along with Michelangelo, given the unique title of "Divine".
Cigoli, a close personal friend of [[Galileo Galilei]] – and regarded by him as the greatest painter of the age&nbsp;– painted a last fresco in the dome of the Pauline chapel of the church of [[Santa Maria Maggiore]] in Rome, depicting the Madonna standing upon a pock-marked lunar orb. This is the first extant example of Galileo's discoveries about the physical nature of the Moon (as he himself drew it in his 1610 treatise ''[[Sidereus Nuncius]]'') having penetrated the visual arts practice of his day. Until this image, the Moon in pictures of the Virgin had always been mythical and smooth, perfectly spherical as described by Platonic & Ptolemaic tradition.
His pupils include [[Cristofano Allori]] (1577–1621), the Fleming [[Giovanni Biliverti]] (1576–1644), [[Domenico Fetti]], [[Giovanni Antonio Lelli]], [[Aurelio Lomi]], [[Pietro Medici]], [[Gregorio Pagani]], and [[Andrea Comodi]] (1560–1638).<ref>{{cite book | first= James R.|last= Hobbes| year= 1849|title=Picture collector's manual; Dictionary of Painters (volume II)| url= https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_4koEAAAAQAAJ| pages= [https://archive.org/details/bub_gb_4koEAAAAQAAJ/page/n69 43]–44 |publisher= T. & W. Boone, 29 Bond Street, London}}</ref>
==References==
{{Reflist}}
==Sources==
* {{cite book | first= Rudolf|last= Wittkower| year=1993| title= Pelican History of Art| chapter= Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750| others=1980 | pages= 97–98 | publisher= Penguin Books Ltd }}
* {{EB1911|wstitle=Cigoli|volume=6|page=365}}
==External links==
{{Commons category|Cigoli}}
* [http://libmma.contentdm.oclc.org/cdm/ref/collection/p15324coll10/id/13424 ''Orazio and Artemisia Gentileschi''], a fully digitized exhibition catalog from The Metropolitan Museum of Art Libraries, which contains material on Cigoli (see index)
{{Authority control}}
{{DEFAULTSORT:Cigoli, Lodovico}}
[[Category:1559 births]]
[[Category:1613 deaths]]
[[Category:People from San Miniato]]
[[Category:16th-century Italian painters]]
[[Category:Italian male painters]]
[[Category:17th-century Italian painters]]
[[Category:Painters from Tuscany]]
[[Category:Italian Mannerist painters]]
[[Category:Italian Mannerist architects]]