Landscape with Architecture and Ruins, Follower of G Ghisolfi Oil, Italian

View Similar Items

Follower of Giovanni Ghisolfi Milano 1623 - 1683

18th Century Oil on Canvas Italian Capriccio Painting of Architectural Ruins

Architectural Capriccio of Roman Ancient Ruins with Figures

French Neoclassical Architectural Landscape, Oil on Canvas

Dutch Landscape, Follower of Jacob van Ruisdael, Indistinctly Signed, Ca. 1720

18th Century Italian Neoclassical Watercolor with Roman Ruins

17th Century Holy Family with Bird Oil on Glass Follower of Simon Vouet

Italian Antique Oil Pastel Painting of a Landscape, 1932

Landscape Oil Painting from Italy

Oil Painting of a Landscape

18th Century Ruins Landscape Attributed to Bartolomeo Pedon

Italian 19C Big Architectural Hand-coloured Print with Black and Gold Frame

1 of 13

Landscape with Architecture and Ruins, Follower of G Ghisolfi Oil, Italian

About the Item

Follower of Giovanni Ghisolfi (After Giovanni Ghisolfi, date 1750) Landscape with Architecture and Ruins Provenance: Roman Collection GHISOLFI (Grisolfi), Giovanni. Son of Giuseppe, architect from Piacenza, he was born in 1623 in Milan, where he studied painting with G. Chignoli. The first certain news about his activity is linked to the visit to Milan of the Archduchess Marianna of Austria in 1649. On that occasion, G. participated in the realization of installations for the reception of the Archduchess in the city, in particular of the triumphal arches and of other pictorial decorations not better described by the sources (Orlandi), but which we know to have been much appreciated by Marianna of Austria. In 1650, with his friend the painter A. Busca, he went to Rome, where he devoted himself to the study of ancient architecture and to the design of architectural fragments. One of the goals of the trip to Rome was also to learn to paint the figures (Baldinucci). In Rome he worked closely with Salvator Rosa: always according to Baldinucci, initially the Rosa performed the figures and the G. the architectural perspectives; then the latter, having learned the technique, became autonomous. In reality it seems more probable that G. realized from the beginning from his own canvases on the example of Rosa's works and that theirs was a relationship between colleagues rather than between teacher and pupil. The news underlines however the close collaboration between the two painters, confirmed by some letters of the Rosa to G.B. Ricciardi in which he expressed himself in relation to G. in terms of great professional esteem. Among the most important paintings of the Roman years is the canvas already in the Rospigliosi collection depicting Roman Ruins (Voss, 1924) and the painting of the Dresden Gemäldegalerie Le rovinedi Cartagine. Some of the landscapes, views and perspectives painted by G. in this period were long mistaken for works by G.P. Sandwiches; and one of his greatest merits was considered to have given examples to the Piacenza painter (Ozzola, 1913). One of the most obvious proofs of Panini's interest in the work of G. is the painting ruins with the Parable of the fish at the Nelson-Atkins Museum in Kansas City, signed and dated 1744. It mentions the work of G. almost literally. Of the same subject in the Almagià collection, datable to the years of his first stay in Rome. This last work also has a pendant, Pythagoras leaves the cave, preserved in the same collection in which G. used as a background the temple of Saturn in the Roman forum and not ruins of fantasy, as was more often the case (Spear). On the basis of the comparison with the already Rospigliosi canvas, the attribution to the G. del Paesaggio with ruins of the Galleria Spada (Zeri) was proposed, more recently referred to on a documentary basis by Domenico Roberti, who painted it in 1703 (Cannatà-Vicini). Also in this case, therefore, a work whose dating is much later was mistaken for a work by G. of the fifties. His landscapes are in fact only partially influenced by those of Rosa, the classicism that emerges from his paintings, rendered through linear compositions, light colors and diffused light, and the solid architectural setting, make G. the anticipator of 18th century landscape painting. After 1654 there is no more news about the presence of G. in Rome, while we know that in 1659 he was in Milan. The news comes again from a letter from Rosa to G.B. Ricciardi, in which the painter wrote that he had received a letter from his Milanese colleague, informing him that he had suffered a great loss of money due to the bankruptcy of a bank in Milan (De Rinaldis). His first documented work in Lombardy is the fresco decoration of the third chapel to the right of the Charterhouse of Pavia, executed in 1661 (Rossi). In 1662 G. was engaged in the fresco decoration of the fourth chapel of the Sacro Monte of Varese, dedicated to the Presentation at the temple. The date is indicated in an inscription on the facade that also remembers the names of the clients: Emilio Omodei and his nephew Cardinal Luigi. The latter was always a great admirer of G. and commissioned him important works, as evidenced by some of his letters of 1669 (Rome, Archive of S. Carlo al Corso) written to a friend who was in Venice to solicit G. at the time in the lagoon city, to return as soon as possible (Salerno). Furthermore, the inventory of the cardinal's assets, drawn up in 1685, shows the presence in his collection of sixteen canvases by G., including a "small town" executed in collaboration with P.F. Mola (Spezzaferro, p. 57). The pictorial decoration of the G. al Sacro Monte includes both the dome (with Eterno between angels and friezes in chiaroscuro) and the walls, where he frescoed a fake architecture with columns and balconies with characters facing to observe the main scene on the wall behind the altar, behind the statue of the priest, the painting pretends to be an opening towards a vast presbytery covered with a dome and an apsidal niche. The frescoes of the Sacro Monte bring the G. closer to the great Baroque decorative tradition, of which he had certainly been able to observe in Rome the highest examples: first of all the frescoes by Pietro da Cortona and also the works of the great quadraturists such as A. Tassi. Also in Lombardy some important quadraturists were active, including the Brescia O. Viviani with him, G. may have completed part of his alumnus before his trip to Rome (Ozzola, 1913).he chapel is dedicated to St. Benedict and presents nine scenes from the life of the saint. Here the landscape prevails only in some scenes, such as the Sermon of s. Blessed, while many other episodes, such as St. Benedict and the false Totila, St. Benedict topples gliidoli, St. Benedict follows the construction of a church, they take place in a solid architectural structure: the figures are cloaked in rich drapery and some clothing details, such as caps and sandals, seem to have been derived from Rosa's repertoire. In the library of the Charterhouse, another work by G is preserved: it is a canvas with a mixtilinear outline depicting St. Bruno meditating on the crucifix, surrounded by a landscape and with two little angels at the top, on the sides. The work is part of a series of four paintings dedicated to the founders of monastic orders (the one with S. Domenico is the work of A. Busca) and is considered one of the later of G., perhaps even of the 1980s (Pesenti). It can be approached with a drawing by G. preserved in the Ambrosian Library with a study of a draped figure and two studies of children (Rossi). A. Spiriti proposed (1994) a different chronology of the Lombard works of G. after the first Roman stay. According to this hypothesis, the first work after returning home was the decoration of the Omodei palace in Cusano Milanino. In the palace, today in conditions of almost total abandonment, G. would have executed the squares of the hall and of the adjacent hall; while J.C. Storer painted allegorical figures. This cycle is only partly legible due to its precarious state of preservation. The attribution to G. is supported by the commission of Cardinal Luigi Omodei and by the fact that it is a quadraturismo updated on the Roman novelties, the proposed date is 1654-1655, a period in which the painter is no longer documented in Rome. A few years later, in 1658-1659, G. would have worked at the Sacro Monte of Varese, again for Luigi Omodei, who wanted to finish the work of the chapel as a thank you for his appointment as cardinal, which took place in 1652. Since Omodei was absent from the Lombardy from 1655-1658, it has been hypothesized that G. was involved in the Varese chapel immediately after his return and not in 1662, the date indicated in the inscription on the façade, which would represent the definitive conclusion of the works. 1663 is perhaps the year of the intervention of G. in Palazzo Borromeo-Arese in Cesano Maderno (Bossaglia). The news of the sources, rather confusing, speaks of the construction inside the palace of a church and of a Dominican convent, where G., A. Busca and the sculptor D. Bussola (Torre) would have worked. In reality the intervention of the two painters is perhaps recognizable in the gallery of the noble floor, where G. would have painted the landscape backgrounds of the great monochrome allegorical figures executed by Busca. The exact location of this intervention is difficult to define due to the poor condition of the frescoes, which have undergone countless repainting. The frescoes of Villa Litta-Modignani near Varese are now illegible, executed by G. with the collaboration of F. Bianchi and G.B. Large, for which a later date has been hypothesized, circa 1680 (Rossi). In 1664 the presence of the G. is documented both in Rome (Hoogewerff), and in Vicenza, where he received a payment for the frescoes realized in the hall of the Trissino-Baston palace (Barbieri). Much of the cycle was lost in 1945 due to a bombing, some secondary paintings of the ceiling remain, the two scenes of the frieze on the long walls, the complete photographic documentation and a group of preparatory drawings (Meijer). On the ceiling, destroyed and subsequently rebuilt, G. had frescoed the fall of the giants and some minor rounds, among stuccos by G.B. Barbarini. The frieze of the walls includes four scenes, identified thanks to the captions of the preparatory drawings, whose common theme, like those of the ceiling, is the miraculous intervention of an eagle in mythological events or of ancient history, this is due to the fact that the heraldic symbol of the eagle appears on the Trissino family crest. In various episodes of the cycle there are backgrounds with ancient ruins and glimpses of landscape, but of course the figures and the narrative aim prevail. In Vicenza, G. also worked in the Giustiniani-Baggio palace, probably in 1665 (Barbieri). The decoration includes the friezes of four rooms, of a more modest character and size than that of Palazzo Trissino and with iconography that is difficult to identify, apart from a Rape of Europe. The scenes are of Classic composure, the characters are cloaked in large pleated dresses and make few measured gestures, all of which bring these frescoes closer to those of Pavia. Also for this cycle there are some preparatory drawings (Meijer) which, together with those relating to Palazzo Trissino, are partly preserved in the Teylers Museum in Haarlem and partly in Windsor Castle, where significantly the traditional attributions were respectively to Pietro da Cortona and P.F. Citizens. The most reliable information on the last years of G.'s life comes from Orlandi, who, besides informing us of the painter's physical appearance ("He was almost a giant man") and the fact that he never married, speaks of a disease that struck him after the Varese enterprise and made him almost blind. G. died in Milan in 1683 and was buried in the church of S. Giovanni in Conca.n 1674 the painting with the liberation of s. Pietro from the prison was already on the left altar of the church of S. Maria della Vittoria in Milan (Torre). It can be hypothesized that G. painted it after his stay in Venice in 1669, from where Cardinal Luigi Omodei had urged him to return to Rome, according to Bossi, the canvas was actually made in Rome. Certainly the client was once again the cardinal, who had made the church a sort of family mausoleum and which had incurred heavy expenses to adorn it with works of art. The painting by G., flanked by angels by the sculptor A. Raggi, is of great compositional simplicity: the saint, the angel and the sleeping soldier are almost on the same floor, the background is barely outlined and has no opening towards the landscape, the spatial depth is suggested only by the foreshortened keys in the foreground. The most demanding decorative undertaking of this late phase of G.'s activity is the fresco decoration of the vault of the presbytery and the choir of S. Vittore in Varese, executed in 1675 with the collaboration of his nephew B. Racchetti, author of the squares architectural (Cattaneo-Colombo). At the center of the vault of the presbytery is the glory of s. Vittore, on the sides and in the apse are painted angels in flight. The decorative structure once again refers to the Roman Baroque decoration and in particular to the works of Pietro da Cortona both for the illusionistic breakthrough of the architectural squares, and because the clouds of the sky go partly to cover the fake architectures, expedients that the G. had already used in the chapel of the Sacred Mount. The measurement shown is of the painting without frame. Italian Fine Arts Authority must check this item in order to allow its exportation. This process lasts about 60 days.

Similar to:
Giovanni Ghisolfi (Author)
Dimensions:
Height: 36.62 in (93 cm)Width: 52.37 in (133 cm)Depth: 0.79 in (2 cm)
Materials and Techniques:
Canvas,Oiled
Place of Origin:
Italy
Period:
1750-1759
Date of Manufacture:
1750
Condition:
Wear consistent with age and use.
Seller Location:
Rome, IT
Reference Number:
1stDibs: LU4882115701261