CUNE'GO, DOME'NICO, a distinguished Italian engraver, and one of the best of the 1Sth century, was born at Verona in 1727. He commenced to study as a painter under Francesco Ferrari, but he found engraving more suited to his taste, and at the age of eighteen he adopted it as his profession. Being a correct draftsman, he was enabled himself to make, from the pictures he engraved, the drawings from which he worked. Cunego settled in Rome in 1761, whore his first works were a series of Roman ruins after Clerisseau, for the Count Girolamo dal Pozzo. In 1773 Gavin Hamilton published his Schola Italica,' of which the best and the greater part of the plates were engraved by Cuncgo. He engraved twenty-two, including the three creations—of the water, of the sun and the moon, and of Adam, from the frescoes of 3hichel Angelo on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel; 'La Fornarina' of Raffaelle, from the Barberini portrait; and ' Galatea,' from the fresco of Raffaelle io the Farnesina. The others are from Giorgione, Titian, the Caracci, Domenichino, Guido, and other celebrated painters.
In 1785 Cunego was invited 'to Berlin to superintend an Engraving Institute (Kupferstich-Institute), which was established by a merchant of the name of Pascal; but after a trial of four years the undertaking Ives abandoned, and Cunego returned in 1789 to Rome. He however
executed a great many plates, chiefly portraits, during his sojourn in Berlin, including several mezzotint and line portraits of Frederic IL and the royal family of Prussia, after E. F. Cunningham, a Scotch painter, then in repute at Berlin. Besides the works already men tioned, Cuncgo engraved eleven mythological subjects after Gavin Hamilton, and numerous other works, religious and profane, after various masters. He engraved also an outline of the great fresco of the Last Judgment' by Michel Angelo, in the Sistine Chapel. He died at Rome in 1794. Cunego's execution, as far as respects the mere line, was not the most perfect ; but his style was light, elegant, and correct; and he was perhaps the beet historical engraver in Italy of his immediate time, until he was surpassed in his later years by his junior and rival Volpato. Ilia two eons, Aloisi and Giuseppe, likewise practised engraving with success.
(Gandellini, Notizie Istoriche degli Intagliatori, AT.; Huber, Manuel des Amateurs, &v. ; Gotha, IViackelmsan and rein Jahrhundert ; Ticozzi, Dizzionario degli Archiletti, dc.)