Page 125 - An account of the Lodge of Nine Muses No. 235. 1777 to 2012UGLE

CHAPTER TWELVE

THE JEWELS

URING its long life the Lodge has accumulated a good deal of gear, but
of all its possessions the most prized is the set of five miniatures, worn
Din the place of the customary jewels by the Master, Wardens, Treasurer
and Secretary. These, by a tradition which cannot be doubted, are those which Bro.
Biggin offered to furnish and Bro. Cipriani engaged to design, on 23 January 1777,
as has already been narrated, and were painted by Cipriani with his own hand.
Like his fellow-student and lifelong friend and collaborator Bartolozzi, Cipriani
was born at Florence in 1727. He came to England in 1755 and settled in London
where his name was already known, and soon established himself as a teacher and
a painter, and as a designer, especially in the field of book illustration. He was one
of the original members of the Royal Academy of Arts on its foundation in 1768.
Bartolozzi followed him to London in 1764.
The following notes on his life are taken from a work which may not be
generally known to members of the Lodge, Edward Edward’s Anecdotes of Painters
who have resided or been born in England, published in 1808. (This was not the Edward
Edwards (1820) whose name is in the list of members.)
In 1761 Cipriani
married a lady with whom he afterwards received a genteel fortune ....
Mr C. in the latter part of his life resided in the neighbourhood of Hammersmith,
where he died Dec. 14. 1785, and was interred in the burying-ground of Chelsea,
in the King’s Road; Over the grave is the following inscription.
Eximio Viro, Artifici, et Amico,
JOHANNI BAPTISTlE Æ CIPRIANI, Florentino,
Hîc humi defoffo, honoris, luctus, et benevolentiæ,
Uno defcripto lapide, triplex edidit monumentum
FRANCISCUS BARTOLOZZI, fuperftes.
Obiit die decima quarta Decembris,
Anno Domini 1785, Ætatis 58.