Luigi Calamatta

Who was Luigi Calamatta?

Luigi Calamatta was an Italian painter and engraver. He was born at Civitavecchia. Orphaned early, he went to live with an uncle, then move to Rome to live in the l'Ospizio San Michele. He was expelled from the hospice, and became the ward of fellow artists.

He studied drawing at Rome under Giangiacomo, took his early lessons in engraving from Marchetti. and executed his first plate under the eye of Ricciari. He went to Paris in 1822, and became a follower of Ingres, whose style he copied in his engraving of The Vow of Louis XIII. He made his first appearance at the Salon of 1827, with an engraving of Bajazet and the Shepherd, after Pierre Joseph Dedreux-Dorcy. He next produced the Mask of Napoleon, from the cast taken by Dr. Antommarchi at St. Helena in 1814, grouping around it a symbolic gathering, embracing portraits, chiefly from Ingres' drawings, of Madame Dudevant, Paganini, Martin, and Duclos. He visited Florence in 1836, and the following year saw him installed as professor of engraving at Brussels. He was later appointed by Giuseppe Longhi to a similar post at the Brera in Milan, und where he died in 1869.