VITTORIO AMEDEO CIGNAROLI (Turin, 1730 - 1800) The Daughter of Jephthah Oil on canvas, cm 35X46 Bibliography: A. Cottino, Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli. Un Paesaggista alla corte dei Savoia e la sua epoca, exhibition catalogue, Turin 2001, p. 128, no. 30 Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli was mentioned by Victor Amadeus III in 1782 as 'our painter of landscapes and woodlands', thus distinguishing himself as a leading Piedmontese Rococo landscape painter. His critical fortune began with the Florentine exhibition of 1922, which was followed by De Logu's contributions in 1931, but it was only with the exhibition dedicated to Piedmontese Baroque in 1963 that an adequate reconstruction of his personality was outlined, leading to the monograph published by Verdoja Oberto. In recent years, a re-examination has been carried out following the 1980 exhibition and in particular Alberto Cottino's studies in 2001. In terms of quality and illustrative variety, the canvases presented here can be judged among the artist's best creations, in which the Arcadian vision is closely linked to the picturesque aesthetics of European taste and the landscape genre takes on purely courtly values, a privileged place of nobility. Therefore, the author must be credited with renewing the change and detachment from the classicism of the Roman matrix, steeped in literary and mythological evocations. For Cignaroli and his patrons, Arcadia was to be found in the estates surrounding the Savoy residences, a countryside free of mythical creatures of Ovidian memory, but a place of delight and hunting.