Scuola romana (XVII) - Coppia di paesaggi con figure

Roman school, 17th century
Landscape with figures by a river - Landscape with woman and child
Oil on canvas, 130 x 94. 5 cm

With the beginning of the 17th century, the trend began, already quite widespread in Europe, to insert religious and, later also, genre scenes into landscape contexts, which broke away from their merely decorative and filling function assumed until the end. of the sixteenth century to thus become the true subject of the painting. In this type of works, created mostly for aristocratic clients such as the Altieri, the Colonna or the Pamphili, there is an abandonment of those compositional schemes typical of mannerism (such as the use of scenic wings, undefined focal points, intersections of planes , compositional asymmetry which involves moving the main scene to one side) , focusing instead on the sensitive perception of the real data.
It is no coincidence that the tradition of landscape works was formed and developed in Rome. In fact, it is here that the greatest artists from all over Italy and Europe meet. The Bolognese Annibale Carracci (1560-1609) opened the season for this type of work with Landscape with the Flight into Egypt, one of the six lunette-shaped canvases created for Cardinal Aldobrandini at the beginning of the century. The presence of artistic personalities from Holland, Germany and France, including both Poussin (1594-1665) and Lorrain (1600-1682) , was fundamental for the development of landscape painting which was constituted according to three main tendencies: ideal and classicist, represented by Carracci and Poussin; realistic, imported from the Dutch; baroque which developed around the figures of Gaspard Dughet (1615-1675) , an Italian-French artist active in the capital (whose sister married Poussin) , and Salvator Rosa (1615-1673) . Although this division should not be considered as a rigid and inflexible scheme (indeed, landscape painting is never theorized and there is no rule to follow) , the pair of landscapes presented here can be included in the typology of the baroque landscape, which is expressed through an "open form" (after Heinrich Wölfflin) in which the arrangement of the elements goes beyond any geometric order, but is based on greater liveliness.
The diptych sees two figures caught in scenes of life that take place along the bank of a river, framed by a harsh landscape, made up of rocky spurs, broken trunks and tree branches moved by the wind, all rendered through fast but also decided that they describe the volumes in a clear way. The intense and dark tones increase the sensation of being faced with a changing condition, just as nature actually is. The two different pairs of figures, captured on one side during a walk and on the other in a moment of leisure and rest, seem to be enveloped and almost crushed by a context that is not very reassuring and full of suggestions, as happens in certain compositions of the above mentioned Dughet and Rosa. Even the elements of an almost uncultivated, indeed harsh nature (the broken trunks and branches bent by the wind, the river, and the rocks looming over the figures) are placed alongside the works of these authors, such as: Landscape without figures by Dughet, Landscape coastal with soldiers by Rosa but also certain works by Bartolomeo Torregiani (1590-1664) , an artist whose biography is almost unknown, whose landscapes are influenced by his master Salvator Rosa, but also by Lorrain.
In conclusion, the pair of landscapes presented is an example of how throughout the 17th century the landscape is part of a new way of seeing, the result of a new sensitivity that focuses the artist's attention on the suggestions given by the mutability of a landscape in which at times man is in perfect harmony, at other times he is subject to the sudden change of nature which underlines the uncertainty of the human being.

The frame is provided free of charge, therefore it cannot be a reason for return or complaint.

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