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[il Sordino]

(b Bologna, Feb 23, 1740; d Bologna, May 5, 1815).

Italian painter, biographer, draughtsman and engraver. He was a pupil of Giuseppe Varotti (1715–80). While a student at the Accademia Clementina, Bologna, he received two awards, including the Premio Marsili for the Sacrifice of Noah (1758; Bologna, Accad. B.A. & Liceo A.). He pursued literary interests throughout his life and became a member of the avant-garde Accademia Letteraria degli ‘Ingomiti’ in Bologna in 1763. His early paintings, notably the St Francis de Sales (1764; Bologna, Ospizio dei Preti), continue the strict classical strain within the Bolognese figurative tradition; they show the influences of Ercole Graziani, Marc Antonio Franceschini and Donato Creti. Calvi primarily painted sacred subjects, receiving numerous, mainly local, commissions. From about 1770 onwards many pictures, including his superb Self-portrait (1770; Bologna, Pin. N.), became increasingly austere and Raphaelesque in both style and design, anticipating 19th-century Bolognese Neo-classicism. In 1766 he frescoed an Assumption of the Virgin...

[Giottino]

(b The Hague, July 18, 1770; d Leiden, Jan 9, 1849).

Dutch draughtsman, printmaker and writer. His father, Jean Humbert (1734–94), was a successful portrait painter, and David Pierre Humbert was awarded a gold medal by the art society Pictura when he was 18. The Dutch ambassador in Paris enabled Humbert to go to Italy in 1789. He stayed there until 1800, spending most of his time in Rome. He became part of the international community of artists, made working trips to Umbria and Tuscany and became a notable draughtsman, working in a highly austere, linear style, as in Jeremiah in the Temple (1798; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.). He was forced to leave Rome because of his support for the French Republican army defending Rome against the papal troops in 1799. He was imprisoned in Civitavecchia for three months, during which time he produced a number of drawings, such as Gagliuffi (1799; now Leiden, Rijksuniv., Prentenkab.).

Humbert subsequently travelled in Italy as the assistant of ...

(b Leeds, Dec 29, 1759; d Masham, N. Yorks, Oct 13, 1817).

English painter, printmaker and writer. The son of a clothier, he was apprenticed to John Fletcher, a ship painter in Hull; in 1775 Ibbetson became a scene-painter there. In 1777 he moved to London, where he worked as a scene-painter and picture restorer. He married about three years later. From 1785 he exhibited landscapes, genre scenes and portraits at the Royal Academy. In 1787–8 Ibbetson was personal draughtsman to Col. Charles Cathcart on the first British Mission to Beijing, a voyage that included visits to Madeira, the Cape of Good Hope and Java. His watercolour False Bay, Cape of Good Hope (London, V&A), made on this journey, shows a picturesque roughness of foliage and rustic staffage adapted from his English landscape style. Cathcart’s death forced Ibbetson to return to England (he exhibited an oil painting, untraced, of the Burial of Col. Cathcart in Java at the Royal Academy in 1789...

(b Valencia, 1757; d Madrid, after 1807).

Spanish illustrator, printmaker and painter. He was nominated Miembro de Mérito of the Real Academia de S Fernando, Madrid, in 1781. He made reproductive engravings of paintings and illustrated such books as Juan Antonio Pellicer’s (1738–1806) annotated edition of Don Quixote (1797), the Fábulas morales (1781–4) by Félix María de Samaniego (1745–1801) and the 1803 edition of the short stories Novelas ejemplares by Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (1547–1616). In his depiction (1790) of the fire in the Plaza Mayor in Madrid and in his interiors of prisons and barracks he pioneered the use of aquatint. He produced the series Caprichos y bombachadas and illustrated the title-page of Ideas y caprichos pintorescos (Madrid, 1807). He had two sons: Laureano (1802–58), an engraver, and Vicente (1796–1857), a history painter.

(b Goyencourt, Nov 25, 1765; d Paris, Feb 13, 1840).

French designer, engraver and architect. He trained as an architect and in 1792 won the Grand Prix de Rome and travelled to Rome. He was responsible for thousands of engraved plates between 1800 and 1815, notably those for Charles Percier and Pierre-François-Léonard Fontaine’s Recueil de décorations intérieures (Paris, 1801), the seminal publication of the Empire style. Normand’s own designs in the Neo-classical style were published in his Décorations intérieures et extérieures (1803), on which he collaborated with the sculptor, Pierre-Nicolas Beauvallet; its 48 plates include designs for furniture, vases and ornaments.

(b Ezinge, nr Groningen, 1744; d Amsterdam, March 9, 1820).

Dutch draughtsman, etcher and writer. His family operated a prosperous studio producing lacquered and painted tinware. He was trained in decorative painting by Johannes Franciscus Francé until he was apprenticed to Jan Augustini (1725–73) in Haarlem. With the support of the well-known Groningen professor Petrus Camper (1722–89), Numan left in 1768 or 1769 for Paris, where he received the patronage of Noël Hallé. After encountering Jacques-Philippe Lebas, Numan acquired skill in graphic techniques. On his return to the Netherlands, he enrolled in the Amsterdam Stadstekenacademie (City Drawing School) and gave drawing lessons to high-ranking amateurs in the Felix Meritis Society. Besides publishing two books, during his time in Amsterdam Numan also painted a number of portraits (e.g. Mrs van Collen-Mogge and her Daughter, 1776; Amsterdam, Rijksmus.) and worked with Jurriaan Andriessen on scenery for the new theatre. He was renowned for his series of 24 views of country houses, ...