La casa degli armenti (The shepherds cottage)

Etching, lettered along bottom 'Ernesto Allason dip Adolfo Bignami inc' followed by title and 'C. Lovera imp.'.

Example (platemark mm 202x166; sheet mm 360c260) printed by Carlo Lovera for the monthly magazine L’Arte in Italia, 1870.

A cottage set beneath a huge mountain, figures and sheep in the foreground.

Bignami combined the activity of painter to that, prevalent, etching, linked to the group of Piedmontese engravers of the second half of the nineteenth century dominated by the personality of A. Fontanesi. Between 1869 and 1870 he lived in Florence, which often depicted in his landscapes. In Turin participated, since 1863, the exhibitions of the Society Promotrice, establishing himself in 1871 with three paintings: The meal of chicks, The last hour of work and The morning mists on the banks of the Arno. In the same year he was noticed at the Promotrice of Bologna with two landscapes judged "of true imprint and conscientious workmanship". The news about his exhibition activity stop in 1877, since the artist had to give up painting early because of an eye disease and family vicissitudes.