Description

Andrea Locatelli (Rome, 1695 – Rome, 1741)

View of the Roman countryside with figures
Oil on canvas, Height 48 cm x Width. 64 cm

Locatelli’s meeting with Filippo Juvarra, known to the Ottoboni family, marks a very important moment for the artist’s production; the architect will provide him with prestigious landscape commissions for the Savoy at the castle of Rivoli, which gave him the opportunity to establish himself as a landscape painter.

In this work we notice how the artist has already taken the step that from the balanced Arcadian compositions and the lesson of Salvator Rosa, lead him to devote himself to a well-calibrated representation of the landscape, studied from life, probably in the wake of JF’s experience. van Bloemen. This painting is set in the green Roman countryside, at the center of the attention of the landscape painters residing in Rome who portrayed uncontaminated and pastoral places on the outskirts of the city.

Many Roman families, for which Locatelli had produced works, dedicated entire spaces to collecting landscape painting; As proof of the success of this genre, the Colonna family possessed dozens of views, including many by G. Dughet and C. Lorrain: it is therefore not unrealistic to assume that these canvases had an influence on Locatelli’s subsequent production.

Our reference: AF00334