Italian family of engravers and print publishers, active in London. Luigi [Lewis, Louis] Schiavonetti (b Bassano, 1 April 1765; d London, 7 June 1810) was a pupil of the painter Giulio Golini before learning to engrave. It is said that he made some imitations of Francesco Bartolozzi’s works for the engraver Gaetano Testolini, who passed these off as his own and was invited to England by Bartolozzi, with Luigi following in 1790. The critic William Paulet Carey wrote that ‘although not a pupil of Bartolozzi’ Luigi ‘had the advantage of his opinions and example’; he proved to be one of the ablest engravers of the day, capable of working in stipple, line and with the etching needle. The best-selling Cries of London, a set of thirteen stipple-engravings after Francis Wheatley, published (1793–7) by Colnaghi’s, were engraved under the direction of Luigi, who carried out six himself. By 1800 Luigi and his brother Niccolo Schiavonetti (b Bassano, 1771; d London, 23 April 1813) were established as publishers, and among their publications were four large plates, engraved jointly with Anthony Cardon, of The Storming of Seringapatam after Robert Ker Porter. They also produced several line engravings. Carey thought that Luigi’s St John after van Dyck ranked ‘among the most perfect line engravings’, and Luigi was elected a member of the Venetian Academy. He was also a competent painter and published some prints after his own designs, such as a set of Five Senses (1801). He was commissioned by Robert Hartley Cromek to etch William Blake’s illustrations to Robert Blair’s The Grave (1808), and subsequently Thomas Stothard’s Canterbury Pilgrims, and was at work on this when he died. His brother was not thought capable of finishing the plate, which passed to James Heath. Luigi was highly regarded, and after his death Cardon engraved a memorial portrait of him after Henry Edridge (O’Donoghue and Hake, iv, p. 33). After Niccolo’s death the brothers’ stock of engravings and copperplates was sold in 1814 (Christie’s, London, 22–3 July).