[José]
(b Siena, 1808; d Lisbon, July 23, 1879).
Italian stage designer and architect, active in Portugal. He studied in Milan and was a stage designer in Lyon before being invited to Lisbon (1836) by Francisco Lodi, the impresario of the Teatro S Carlos there. For more than 40 years he worked in Lisbon as a stage designer, in partnership with another Italian designer, Achille Rambois (c. 1810–82), contributing to a brilliant period in Portuguese opera. Cinatti, who was essentially a Romantic, also practised as an architect, attempting to turn the landscapes and buildings of his imaginary stage designs into reality with strictly academic Neo-classical forms and an eclectic fusion of motifs and ornament. His Palacete Bessone (1856), Rua Vitor Cordon, Palacete Nunes Correia (1865), Avenida da Liberdade, and Palacete Anjos Praça do Príncipe Real are among the most distinguished eclectic buildings in Lisbon, with elegant proportions, discrete decoration and sensitivity to context. Outside Lisbon his Palácio Valenças at Sintra has an Italianate design with contrasting neo-Manueline details, and the Casa Bessone (...
