A native of Signa, Ciabilli started frequenting the scientific cultural
circles in Florence from his youth and, after first learning
mathematics under Vincenzo Viviani, a follower of Galileo, he then
started to study engineering and civil and military architecture.
However his meeting with Simone Pignoni, who realised that he had a
natural artistic talent and became his teacher, was to mark the start
of his career as a painter. Judging from the number of his documented
works, his production was extremely high, though very few have survived
to this day.
His youthful work - the "pendants" in Santa Maria Novella
(1693) and the Semiramis at the Stibbert Museum (1695-1700) - still
shows echoes of the style of Pignoni (in the way the shadows are
created around the figures), who was to remain his first point of
reference right up until his death. The brilliant smoothness of the
faces, the bony conformation of the hands and the complex but elegant
way in which he usually painted the folds in the vestments, are typical
instead of his personal style, both in his early work and that of his
later career.
In 1706 he was commissioned to carry out the decorations
in the Chapel of Sant'Anastasio in the Church of San Frediano in
Cestello. Here he painted an altarpiece of the Martyrdom of St.
Anastasius and a cycle of frescoes with the Glory of the Saint, two
episodes related to the worship of the images and relics of saints, and
the four Virtues. His Self-portrait in the Uffizi dates from shortly
after, around 1710.
The only other works by Ciabilli that have survived
and been identified to date are a series of four canvases in the
Sacristy of Santa Maria Novella - representing the Archangel Gabriel
and the Annunciation, St. Dominic of Guzman and St. Thomas Aquinas -
datable as 1693, and two "pendants" with the figures of St. Nicholas
the Bishop and St. Anthony Abbot signed and dated 1737, again in
Florence, in the Church of San NiccolÚ del Ceppo. They are canvases
full of an intense religious sentiment and characterised by a delicate
and sober use of colour. |
