Italian painter, also called Il Milanese. He was active mainly in Bologna and painted still-lifes.
He first studied under Daniele Crespi in Milan but, when he was 17, entered the Bolognese workshop of Guido Reni. His altarpieceGLOSSARYA picture or sculpture that stands on or is set up behind an altar. The term reredos is used for an ornamental screen or partition, not directly attached to the altar table but affixed to the wall behind it. A diptych is an altarpiece consisting of two panels, a triptych one of three panels, and a polyptych one of four or more panels. From the 14th to 16th century, the altarpiece was one of the most important commissions in European art; it was through the altarpiece that some of the most decisive developments in painting and sculpture came about. of the Stoning of St Stephen (1637; Bologna, S. Stefano) suggests that he rapidly became established. He painted other works for the same church, and a Flagellation and a Crowning with Thorns survive (both in situ). His few surviving commissions from this period inevitably demonstrate the influence of Reni. Among them is the Conversion of St Paul (c. 1641; Bologna, S. Paolo), which is one of eight paintings decorating the apseGLOSSARYA semicircular projection, roofed with a half-dome, at the east end of a church behind the altar. Smaller subsidiary apses may be found around the choir or transepts. Also known as an exedra. The adjective is apsidal. around the marbleGLOSSARYloosely applied to any hard limestone that can be sawn into thin slabs and will take a good polish so that it is suitable for decorative work; more strictly, it refers to metamorphosed limestones whose structure has been recrystallized by heat or pressure. Marbles are widely disseminated and occur in a great variety of colours and patterns, but certain types have been particularly prized by sculptors. The most famous of Greek white marbles in the ancient world was the close-grained Pentelic, which was quarried at Mount Pentelicon in Attica. The Elgin Marbles are carved in Pentelic. Widely used also were the somewhat coarser-grained translucent white marbles from the Aegean islands of Paros and Naxos. Parian marble was used for the celebrated Mausoleum at Halicarnassus. The pure white Carrara marble, quarried at Massa, Carrara, and Pietra Santa in Tuscany from the 3rd century BC, is the most famous of all sculptors' stones. It was used for the Apollo Belvedere, and was much favoured in the Renaissance, particularly by Michelangelo, who often visited the quarries to select material for his work. Neoclassical sculptors also favoured Carrara marble because of its ability to take a smooth, sleek surface, but it can look rather 'dead' compared with some of the finest Greek marbles. group of the Beheading of St Paul (c. 1634) by Alessandro Algardi.
In the mid-1640s Cittadini made a journey to Rome, which transformed both the subject-matter of his art and his technique. Paintings of Lot and his Daughters and Hagar and the Angel (both Dresden, Gemäldegalerie) date from around this time and suggest that he was strongly influenced by the Venetian tendencies in the art of Pietro Testa and PierGLOSSARYOne of the massive supports on which an arch or upper part of a church stands. A pier is generally larger than a column, but may consist of a cluster of columns. Francesco Mola and to some extent by the work of Simone Cantarini.
After returning to Bologna, he received many commissions. His portraits and still-lifes, in which he united realismGLOSSARYRealism (with an upper case "R"), also known as the Realist school, denotes a mid-nineteenth century art movement and style in which artists discarded the formulas of Neoclassicism and the theatrical drama of Romanticism to paint familiar scenes and events as they actually looked. Typically it involved some sort of sociopolitical or moral message, in the depiction of ugly or commonplace subjects. One of the main representatives and spokesmen was the painter Gustave Courbet. In the dispute about ways to represent reality, Realism rebelled against the idealistic and classicist tendencies in painting. with classicism, won him considerable success in Bologna.
His two sons Giovanni Battista Cittadini and Carlo Cittadini were also still-life painters.
