CIPRIANI, GIOVANNI BATTISTA

born , 1727, Florence died Dec. 14, 1785, London, Eng. painter who was the first exponent in England of Neoclassicism and who played an important part in directing 18th-century English artistic taste. Cipriani was a pupil of the Anglo-Florentine painter Ignazio Hugford. In 1750 he went to Rome, where he encountered nascent Neoclassicism and met members of the English colony there. The architect Sir William Chambers and the painter Joseph Wilton took him to England in 1755. His work there largely consists of illusionistic murals for the decoration of private residencese.g., the library ceiling at Buckland House, Berkshire (after 1757). He was also a prolific draftsman of classical and allegorical subjects.