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Giovanni Ghisolfi
capriccio with biblical scene painted by Giovanni Ghisolfi

About the Item

Giovanni Ghisolfi (Milan, 1623 - 1683), attr. Capriccio with biblical scene Oil on canvas, 50X74 cm Framed, 67 x 90 cm The work under consideration depicts a biblical episode within a background of classical architectural ruins. More specifically, Peter's second miracle is narrated. In Jaffa lived a seamstress named Tabita who was known for her goodness and charitable works. At one point, Tabitha fell ill and died: the other disciples, learning that Peter was in the nearby town of Lydda, sent for him. Arriving at Tabita's house, Peter encountered some other weeping widows, who showed him the clothes the woman used to make for them. The apostle began to pray, in solitude, in the room where Tabitha had been left, and said to her, "Tabitha, get up!": when he had said these words, the woman was resurrected. The sequence of arches flanked by what remains of an Ionic temple, as well as the rocchi and column bases between which the figures juggle, recall compositional solutions typical of Giovanni Ghisolfi. Such elements are in fact found in Classical Scene with Ruins in Dresden, gemaldegalerie, or the pair Marina with Ruins and Ruins on the Coast in Private Collection or even Dido finds the horse skull pointed out to her by Juno at the spot where she is to found Carthage at the Sabauda Gallery in Turin. In Appearance of Mercury to Alexander the Great in Hanover (Niedersachsisches Landesmuseum), on the other hand, we see scaffolding for the reconstruction of buildings, an expedient also employed by Ghisolfi in two other canvases of similar subject matter but unknown location. Giovanni Ghisolfi was the forerunner of a pictorial genre that only in the 18th century and with Giovanni Paolo Pannini achieved an extraordinary illustrative fortune. Ghisolfi was born in Milan in 1623, the son of Giuseppe, an architect from Piacenza who was active in the Lombard capital in the 17th century. the painter was trained in the family circle, and the first certain news about his activity occurs when, in 1649, he is mentioned as participating in the creation of triumphal arch arrangements and various pictorial decorations for the reception of Archduchess Marianne of Austria. He moved to Rome around 1650 along with Antonio Busca, and likely took part in the Cortonesque shipyards and began an interesting collaboration with Salvator Rosa, for whom he painted landscapes and architectural views. From this association and from observing one of the pioneers of the genre, Codazzi, the Milanese learned the right way to insert the human presence within the architectural frame: indeed, his figures appear loosely executed, often distributed in the foreground, especially in his early maturity. In the Eternal City he certainly devoted himself to the study of ancient architecture and the drawing of architectural fragments: this illustrative and archaeological bent soon revealed an intimate classicist vein, marked by elegant compositional balances, which can also be traced in the present. By 1659 we find him in Lombardy where he tried his hand at decorating religious themes in the chapel dedicated to St. Benedict at the Certosa in Pavia and in the chapel at Sacro Monte in Varese dedicated to the Presentation in the Temple. He became a renowned painter and we also find him decorating several palaces of the Milanese nobility, including palazzo Omodei in Cusano Milanino and palazzo Borromeo-Arese in Cesano Maderno and in palazzo Litta-Modignani in Varese. He also worked in Vicenza and Varese where, in 1675, he was called to execute the decoration of the vault and chancel and choir of San Vittore with The Glory of San Vittore. He died in Milan in 1683 and was buried in the church of S. Giovanni in Conca. Giovanni Ghisolfi, in addition to being a painter of large compositions with a sacred background, is also known today as a landscape painter and maker of capriccios: by capriccios we mean when, in painting, elements such as ruins, buildings and various architectural elements are combined together in an often extravagant way. A sense of classicism emerges from these paintings of his, rendered through linear compositions with clear colors and diffused light, and a solid architectural setting that make Ghisolfi a forerunner of 18th-century Vedutism. Ghisolfi's work would in fact be an important reference for the painter Giovanni Paolo Pannini, who in 1744 would take up in his painting depicting the "Ruins with the Parable of the Fish" preserved in the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City a work by Ghisolfi of the same subject preserved in the Almagià collection.
  • Creator:
    Giovanni Ghisolfi (1623 - 1683, Italian)
  • Dimensions:
    Height: 19.69 in (50 cm)Width: 29.14 in (74 cm)Depth: 0.79 in (2 cm)
  • Medium:
  • Period:
  • Condition:
  • Gallery Location:
    Milan, IT
  • Reference Number:
    1stDibs: LU2639214366292
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