Linati, Claudio (1790–1832)
Linati, Claudio (1790–1832)
Claudio Linati (b. 1790; d. 1832), Italian printer. Linati was born in Parma, Italy. At seventeen he belonged to the Engraving Society in Parma. In 1809 he went to Paris, where he attended the atelier of Jacques-Louis David. In Belgium, Linati met the Mexican diplomat Manuel E. Gorostiza, who awarded him a loan and a contract from the Mexican government to bring the first lithographic press to Mexico. In 1825, Linati arrived in Veracruz with Gaspar Franchini, whom he knew through his political activities in Parma with the Carbonaris. In Mexico he founded El Iris, and in 1826 he joined Florencio Galli and the Cuban writer José María Heredia. Later joined by Onazio de Attellis, marques de Santangelo, an Italian, they used their printing skills in polemics. A liberal and revolutionary opposed to all forms of tyranny, Linati was exiled. The press, however, remained at the Academy of San Carlos, where a course in lithography was offered for one year; however, use of the press to illustrate publications was tightly restricted.
Back in Europe, Linati completed and published in Brussels a series of lithographs entitled Les costumes civils, militaires, et religieux du Méxique (1826?), which portrayed various Mexican costumes and customs. It is an important book in that it provides a glimpse of the way in which Europeans imagined the social life of a country that so attracted them. Linati died in Tampico, Tamaulipas, Mexico.
See alsoArt: The Colonial Era .
BIBLIOGRAPHY
Edmundo O'Gorman, Documentos para la historia de la litografía en México (1955).
Manuel Toussaint, La litografía en México en el siglo XIX (1934).
Additional Bibliography
Mathes, W. Michael. Mexico on Stone: Lithography in Mexico, 1826–1900. San Francisco: Book Club of California, 1984.
Solà, Angels. "Escocés, yorkinos y carbonarios: La obra de O. de Attellis, marqués de Santangelo, Claudio Linati y Florencio Galli en México en 1826." Boletín Americanista 26:34 (1984): 209-244.
Esther Acevedo