Luigi Lucioni was born in 1900 in a small Italian town called Malnate in the foothills of the Alps. Attracted by greater financial opportunities elsewhere, the family immigrated to the United States in 1911. He is best known for painting naturalistic still lifes and landscapes during a time period when many artists strayed from realism. Lucioni also holds the title of the youngest artist to have a painting purchased by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, an achievement occurring in 1932 through the sale of Pears with Pewter.

During his childhood in New Jersey, the Italian-born artist excelled in his drawing lessons, but quit after a disagreement with a teacher. Luckily, Lucioni did not quit producing artwork because he won an art competition in 1915 granting him admission to Cooper Union. Working during the day at an engraving company in Brooklyn, Lucioni took evening classes with William Starkweather, an impressionist landscape painter, as well as William DeLeftwich Dodge, a muralist. By 1919, Lucioni had entered the National Academy of Design and was introduced to etchings by William Auerbach-Levy, the Belarusian-American artist. In 1922, Lucioni won the Tiffany Foundation Scholarship, which sent the young artist back to Italy to study Renaissance painting. When he returned to America, his work was much more detail-oriented and realistic than ever before, reflecting the style of Renaissance-era painting that he studied and the precision required in etching. Beginning in 1929, Lucioni spent summers painting still lifes and landscapes of barns and hills in Manchester, Vermont. Lucioni, an avid opera fan, taught at the Art Students’ League in New York later in his life. A lifelong opponent to the avant-garde, Lucioni spent his final years in Union City, New Jersey.