My wife Sandra’s maiden name is Cipriani. Among her ancestors is Giovanni Battista Cipriani who is considered to be among the finest Italian decorative artists. Working in the elegantly sophisticated milieu of eighteenth century English aristocratic life not only did Cipriani produce drawings engraved by Bartolozzi, he contributed to the interior decoration of palaces and country houses and painted the magnificent state carriages for Royalty and for the City’s Lord Mayor, now to be admired in the Museum of London.
Some years ago I gave a talk on this neglected but extremely fine artist to the audience of the Università della terza età at Bagni di Lucca. (See https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2017/04/06/my-wifes-illustrious-ancestor/). The following is extracted from this talk.
Giovanni Battista Cipriani was born in 1727 in Florence and died in 1785 in London United Kingdom. He received his first art lessons from Ignazio Hugford, a Florentine painter of English origins born in Pisa. (Incidentally, the surname Cipriani derives from ‘Cipria’ meaning talcum powder. It is well-known that some of the best make-up artists were also painters through their skills in enhancing the female appearance.)
From 1750 to 1753 Cipriani was in Rome and there he met the architect Sir William Chambers and the sculptor Joseph Wilton whom he accompanied to England in August 1755. Having already painted two pictures at the Abbey of San Michele Pelago in Pistoia, Cipriani had already become well known and on his arrival in England was commissioned by Lord Tilney, Duke of Richmond and other nobles. When his friend Sir William Chambers designed the Albany in London for Lord Holland, Cipriani painted the ceiling. He also painted part of a ceiling at Buckingham Palace and a room with poetic themes at Standlynch (Trafalgar Park) in Wiltshire. Among his masterpieces, are his decorations in Somerset House which was also built by his friend Chambers. Cipriani not only was in charge of London’s superb palace’s interior decoration but also its sculptural details. Somerset house’s apartments designed by Sir William Chambers (1750) for the imposing palace the original home of the Royal Academy owe much to the grace and brushstrokes of Cipriani. The central panel of the library ceiling was painted by Sir Joshua Reynolds, but the four niches in the bays, which represent Allegory, Fable, Nature and History, are the work of Cipriani.
It was natural that Cipriani devoted himself to the decoration of the apartments of the Royal Academy of which he had been one of the founders (1768) and from which he had obtained the diploma.
Giovanni Battista Cipriani was used extensively by publishers, for whom he did pen and ink drawings (His friend Bartolozzi engraved most of them. Drawings by him can be seen in both the British Museum and the Victoria and Albert Museum and now, for reasons which will become clear later in a place very near us!)
Cipriani bequeathed his self-portrait in pastels to the Uffizi and another self-portrait, drawn, is kept in the cabinet of drawings and prints of the Uffizi. Cipriani is depicted in the large painting by the German painter Johann Zoffany, together with the other founders of the Royal Academy. A pastel by him representing Cleopatra is in the City Museum and Art Gallery, Plymouth. A thousand other drawings, including drawings, pastels and watercolours, were in the artist’s house at the time of his death: they were all sold at auction in 1786, like his paintings. So his works were dispersed and today are found in public and private collections.
Our Christmas presents tend to be very practical ones. They consist largely of food and clothing. They are also invariably presented to us courtesy of our cats as the labels show! This year, however, I wanted to give Sandra something a little more poetical. As she is of artistic bent how about a work of by her illustrious ancestor Giovanni Battista Cipriani? I might not be able to afford a full-scale canvas but perhaps a drawing might be within my means if I could find one.
By chance scouring the internet I came across the very item I wished to wrap up as a Christmas present. It was on an auction site and its details were as follows:
Description
Giovanni Battista Cipriani (1727-1785), Lovers. Ink and wash on paper 12 x 20 cm
Bears a collection name (bottom left) inscribed Cipriani (on the reverse).
Provenance: Collection of Prof. J. Leski (Professor of Astrology, University of Cracovia), according to a declaration from the Administration of the Museum of the Princes of Lubomirski, Lwow, 1923.
Family of Elena Parys Feldberg by descent to the present owner.
Note: with the name of the collection (bottom left), inscribed “Cipriani” and additional inscriptions (on the reverse).
With regard to the details associated with the drawing: Prof J. Leski was, in fact a professor of astronomy, not astrology, and indeed developed the astronomy department in the University of Cracow, a city which at that time was part form the Hapsburg Empire. Lubomirski is a Polish princely family and lived in a beautiful palace in the city of Lvov which was then part of Galicia, a province in the Hapsburg Empire and is now in the Ukraine and has changed its name to Lviv. This city is a UNESCO world heritage site and I pray that it may not suffer too much in the senseless struggle now being raged in that martyred land.
Here is the Lubomirski palace which dates from the 1760’s and which most poignantly in view of what is now being suffered by that European country is where Yaroslav Stetsko proclaimed Ukraine‘s independence several days after Nazi Germany‘s invasion of the Soviet Union.
I found the Cipriani drawing charming and so I put in my bid. It was successful and the little Cipriani drawing started its long journey from the Middle East towards our Italian mountain eyrie.
But what was the last provenance of the drawing and in particular its owners, the family of Elena Parys Feldberg? I did my little bit of research and found out the following:
José Moskovits (03/27/1926-11/30/2014) was born on March 27, 1926 in Mezöcsát, Hungary. As a teenage boy, José Moskovits was sent to a Nazi forced labour battalion. His mother and four siblings perished in Auschwitz, his father in Buchenwald. Mr. Moskovits was able to flee and joined the Jewish resistance in Budapest. After the liberation by the Red Army in January 1945, he became a leader in the youth movement “Dror Habonim.” Together with other activists he organized a successful illegal transport to the British mandate of Palestine of 500 Jewish orphans whose parents had been murdered during the Holocaust.
In 1945, Mr. Moskovits met his later wife Halina (Elena) Parys Feldberg, a native of Radomsk in Poland and survivor of several concentration camps. All of her family had been murdered in Treblinka. Another illegal transport of refugees that José Moskovits organized in 1947 was intercepted by the British and Mr. Moskovits was sent to a holding camp on Cyprus. A few months later José Moskovits was able to settle in Palestine. In 1948 he fought as a volunteer in the Golani Brigade during the War of Independence. He was wounded and in 1949 he was honourably discharged. In 1953, Halina Feldberg and José Moskovits married in Asunción, Paraguay where they had emigrated. Their marriage would last over sixty years until Mrs. Moskovits’ death in April 2014.
In 1955, Mr. and Mrs. Moskovits settled in Argentina. In 1958, José Moskovits opened his law office in Buenos Aires to assist Holocaust survivors with their reparation claims against the German government. Eventually, his law office would assist thousands of survivors all over South America. He maintained contact with Simon Wiesenthal and assisted in the identification of Nazi war criminals hiding in South America, and allegedly also played a role in the capture of Adolf Eichmann by setting up safe houses for the Israeli agents. In the 1960s, Mr. Moskovits moved his law practice into larger and more modern premises at Uriburu 272 PB no. 2 in Buenos Aires where he practiced law until the office was disbanded in 2012.
From 1967 to 1976, Mr. Moskovits was the President of Sherit Hapleita, the Argentine Association of Jewish Survivors of Nazi Persecution. In that capacity he raised awareness of the Holocaust in Argentina, organized survivor reunions and commemorations, participated in international Holocaust events and conferences, and held demonstrations in support of the State of Israel. At the height of Argentina’s so-called Dirty War, from 1976 to 1984, Mr. Moskovits was forced to move to Israel from where he continued to represent his survivor clients. Starting in 1976 until his death in 2014, Mr. Moskovits remained the lifelong honorary President of Argentina’s survivor organization. José Moskovits passed away on November 30, 2014 in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
So there we are. I am truly happy that I now have two authentic Cipriani within the boundaries of our household: Antonia Alexandra Cipriani and Giovanni Battista Cipriani!
Here they are!
