{{short description|Italian painter}}

{{Infobox artist | name = Jacopo Ligozzi | image = Ligozzi.jpg | caption = | birth_name = | birth_date = 1547 | birth_place = Verona | death_date = 1627 | death_place = Florence | known_for = Painting | movement = Mannerism | notable_works = }}

[[File:Allegory of the Redemption.jpg|right|thumb|200px|''The Allegory of the Redemption''; Madrid, Prado Museum.]] '''Jacopo Ligozzi''' (1547–1627) was an Italian painter, illustrator, designer, and miniaturist. His art can be categorized as late-Renaissance and Mannerist styles.

==Biography==

Born in Verona, he was the son of the artist Giovanni Ermano Ligozzi, and part of a large family of painters and artisans. After a time in the Habsburg court in Vienna, where he displayed drawings of animal and botanical specimens, he was invited to come to Florence and became one of the court artists for the Medici.

Upon the death of Giorgio Vasari in 1574, he became head of the ''Accademia e Compagnia delle Arti del Disegno'', the officially patronized guild of artists, which was often called to advise on diverse projects. He served Francesco I, Ferdinando I, Cosimo II and Ferdinando II, Grand Dukes of Tuscany. For the Medici, he adorned the Grotto of Thetys in the Colossus of the Apennine.<ref>{{Cite book |last1=Tantardini |first1=Lucia |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=4_P_DwAAQBAJ&dq=Jacopo+Ligozzi+and+grotto+de+thetys&pg=PA17 |title=Lomazzo's Aesthetic Principles Reflected in the Art of his Time: With a Foreword by Paolo Roberto Ciardi, an Introduction by Jean Julia Chai, and an Afterword by Alexander Marr |last2=Norris |first2=Rebecca |date=2020-08-31 |publisher=Brill |isbn=978-90-04-43510-0 |pages=17 |language=en}}</ref> He was named director of the grand-ducal ''Galleria dei Lavori'', a workshop providing designs for artworks made mainly for export: embroidered textiles and for the newly popular medium of pietre dure, mosaics of semiprecious stones and colored marbles.

He painted frescoes depicting episodes from the life of St. Francis of Assisi for the cloister of the Ognissanti. He also painted a canvas of ''St. Raymond resuscitating a Child'' for Santa Maria Novella and ''Martyrdom of St. Dorothea'' for the church of the Conventuali at Pescia. His altarpieces depict crowds in staged positions, robbed of emotion; the paintings breathe an academic staleness that is typical of Florentine painting of the age.

In his many pen-and-wash drawings featuring religious, mythological, or heraldic images, Ligozzi demonstrated a greater originality. He is known best for his depictions of fauna and flora, which reflect the nascent scientific pursuits of the Medici. His botanically correct depictions of plants can even include exquisitely observed root systems. Among his accurate depictions of animals is ''A Marmot with a Branch of Plums'' (1605). Ligozzi was commissioned to create some of the depictions found in the encyclopedic visual catalogue of the plant collections of Bolognese Ulisse Aldrovandi (kept in the Gabinetto Disegni e Stampe of the Uffizi Gallery). He can be described as the Audubon of late Renaissance Florence. He is also credited with bringing the lusher color-palette of Verona to Florence.

[[File:Jacopo Ligozzi, A Marmot with a Branch of Plums, 1605, NGA 139309.jpg|thumb|left|A Marmot with a Branch of Plums, 1605, now in the US National Gallery of Art (NGA 139309)]]

{{commons category}} Ligozzi was influential among some subsequent Florentines including Bartolomeo Bimbi. Among his pupils were Donato Mascagni, known as Frate Arsenio, and Mario Balassi. Ligozzi's nephew Bartolommeo Ligozzi was also a painter. In Florence, he worked on some projects with Bernardino Poccetti. Both Agostino Carracci and Andrea Andreani engraved some of his works.<ref>{{cite book| first=Michael| last=Bryan| year=1889| title=Dictionary of Painters and Engravers, Biographical and Critical |volume=II L-Z |editor=Walter Armstrong |editor2=Robert Edmund Graves | publisher=George Bell and Sons|location=London |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=K2cCAAAAYAAJ| page= 57}}</ref> He died in Florence.

<!--if, due to its content, an image gallery would only lend itself to a title along the lines of "Gallery" or "Images of [insert article title]", as opposed to a more descriptive title, the gallery should either be revamped or moved to the Commons: <gallery> Clement VIII mosaic.jpg|Pope Clement VIII in pietre dure Jacopo Ligozzi - Model for a pietre dure table top - WGA13015.jpg|Model of pietra dura table top Jacopo Ligozzi Rape of the Sabine Women.JPG|Rape of the Sabines, 1605–15 Chiostro di ognissanti, storie di s. francesco, lunetta 06 iacopo ligozzi.JPG|St Francis renounces his Garments at Ognissanti, Florence Chiostro di ognissanti, storie di s. francesco, lunetta 16 iacopo ligozzi.JPG|St Francis before the Sultan at Ognissanti Jacopo ligozzi, agonia nel giardino.jpg|Agony in Gesthemane Allegory of a warrior death by Jacopo Ligozzi.jpg|Allegory of a warrior death Jacopo Ligozzi - Gerbil - WGA13012.jpg|Gerbil Jacopo Ligozzi - Psittacus Ararauna - WGA13011.jpg|Parrot Jacopo Ligozzi - Pineapple (Bromelia ananas) - WGA13013.jpg|Pineapple </gallery> -->

==Sources==

*John Seabrook, "Annals of Agriculture: Renaissance Pears", ''The New Yorker'', September 5, 2005, p.&nbsp;105. *[https://web.archive.org/web/20050310053905/http://www.getty.edu/art/collections/bio/a3013-1.html Getty Center Biography] *[https://web.archive.org/web/20070916123526/http://www.nga.gov/exhibitions/flowerartist.htm National Gallery Art exhibition titled ''The Flowering of Florence: Botanical art for the Medici''] * {{cite book|last=Tomasi|first=Lucia Tongiorgi|title=I ritratti di piante di Iacopo Ligozzi|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=CwdHAQAAIAAJ|year=1993|publisher=Pacini|location = Pisa|isbn=978-88-7781-079-3}}

==References== {{Reflist}}

==External links== * {{commons category-inline}} *[http://www.virtualuffizi.com/uffizi1/artista.asp?Autore=Jacopo+Ligozzi Uffizi Gallery site]

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Ligozzi, Jacopo}} Category:Mannerist artists Category:Italian botanical illustrators Category:Italian painters of animals Category:16th-century Italian painters Category:Italian male painters Category:17th-century Italian painters Category:1547 births Category:1627 deaths Category:Artists from Verona