Giacinto Gigante

Who was Giacinto Gigante?

Giacinto Gigante was an Italian painter. Gigante was introduced to painting by his father Gaetano Gigante.

His brothers Achille Gigante and Ercole Gigante also became landscape artists. He trained in the style of Jacob Philipp Hackert and was influenced by the technical drawing carried out at the Naples Royal Institute of Fine Arts.

Along with Achille Vianelli he was to be strongly influenced by a large colony of foreign painters then present in Naples including Huber and Pitloo. From Jakob Wilhelm Hüber, Gigante learnt watercolour technique and the use of the panoramic ‘camera lucida’ method. Via Huber he met the Dutch artist Anton Sminck van Pitloo, who became his teacher for a few years. In 1823, Gigante won the Naples Royal Institute of Fine Arts drawing competition. In 1826, he displayed four works at the first Esposizione di Belle Arti. Reportedly though, Gigante did not fit in well with the life of the Naples Royal Institute of Fine Arts, and left.

Around 1826 he was living in Naples in Vicoletto del Vasto 15, with Van Pitloo, Carl Götzloff and Teodoro Duclere. He was related by marriage to Achille Vianelli.

He is one of the original members of the 19th-century Neapolitan "Posillipo School" of painting, named for the area where he lived in Naples.