Italian Landscape – Attributed To Andrea Locatelli (1695 – 1741)

Oil on canvas. 18th century Roman school attributed to Andrea Locatelli.
If nature is a divine creation, the organization of it in what is called "a landscape" is unique to man. The landscape painter is thus guided by the concert of the seasons, by the passage of time and by the passage of the figures who wander through these places. Under a blue sky punctuated by a few spring clouds, the artist deploys here the poetry of an undergrowth which reveals a few figures walking towards a meandering river. Perched on a rocky promontory, two men are fishing. Behind them, in the center of the composition, a shepherd accompanied by a musician perched on a donkey leads a small group of cattle through the clearing. For her, travel is a pleasure in itself and not just a way to reach a destination. A second woman carrying a jar on her head goes up the path in the opposite direction. Does she go to the village with classical architecture that we can see on the left bank of the river? She will then come across a pilgrim and a resting merchant on her way. It's a day that begins serenely in this landscape barely warmed by a rising sun whose yellow light illuminates the composition horizontally. The artist prints the flow of time by painting the oscillation of the foliage, thus suggesting the effect of a light breeze whose force moves the clouds and carries the birds above the river. In front of our vast landscape, the spectator will not fail to recall the prose of the famous Voyage en Italie by Chateaubriand: "Nothing is comparable for beauty to the lines of the Roman horizon, to the gentle inclination of the planes, to the smooth contours and fleeing from the mountains that end it. […] A particular vapour, diffused in the distance, rounds off the objects and conceals what they may have that is hard and uneven in their forms. […] A singularly harmonious hue marries the earth, the sky and the waters”. Andrea Locatelli delivers a skilful synthesis here by arranging elements of ancient architecture in a landscape inspired by the region of Latium where secular life unfolds. The morning light penetrating the vegetation airs the composition. Playing on the contrasts of shadows, he spreads out a succession of shots up to the horizon. Its Arcadian and idyllic style borrows from the art of Claude Gellée and Nicolas Poussin who developed classicism in landscape painting. He distinguishes himself from the bamboches and the Nordic tradition by refusing genre painting and anecdotal figures. In doing so, he manages to breathe a sense of poetic solitude into his art, and thus goes beyond the simple rural register.

Our composition is elegantly underlined by a molded frame in gilded wood.
Dimensions: 94 x 167 cm – 108 x 181 cm with the frame.
Provenance: Former Swiss collection

Biography: Andrea Locatelli (Rome, 19 Dec. 1695 – id. 19 Feb. 1741) was an Italian artist who began his apprenticeship with the marine painter Monsu Alto around 1712. Following the death of his master, he continued his training with Bernardino Fergioni (1674 – 1738) then with Biago Puccini. In 1715 he received a commission to decorate a room in Rome's Palazzo Ruspoli, for which he was paid at a master's rate. Sign of his success, Locatelli was offered 500 pounds more than his main competitor, Giovanni Paolo Panini, for the execution of a preparatory study of 1724, relating to a major architectural project commissioned by Duke Vittorio Amadeo II of Savoy. In 1735, Philip V of Spain commissioned two paintings from him to adorn a room in the royal palace of La Granja. It was in landscape painting that he excelled and through which he made himself known to the Roman cardinals Alessandro Albani and Pietro Ottoboni. Locatelli was a prolific painter and the inventory of the Colonna family in 1783 lists 80 of his works.

Bibliography:
- BUSIRI VICI, Andrea, Andrea Locatelli and Roman Landscape Painting of the Eighteenth Century, Roma, U. Bozzi, 1976.
- SESTIERI, Giancarlo, La pittura del Settecento, Turin, Unione Tipografico-Editrice Torinese corso Raffaello, 1988.
- Settecento: Le century of Tiepolo, (exp. cat., Lyon, Musée des Beaux-Arts, October 5, 2000 – January 7, 2011; Lille, Palais des Beaux-Arts, January 26 – April 30, 2001), Paris, Editions de la RMN, 2000
- The Settecento: Italian Rococo and Early Neo-Classical Paintings 1700-1800, dir. Patrick Mathiesen, (exp. cat., London, 04 Nov – 20 Dec 1987, Matthiesen fine art Ltd), London, Matthiesen, 1987.