Description

Nunzio Ferraioli (Nocera dei Pagani, 1660/61 – Bologna, 1735)

Landscape with Figures
Dimensions 124×224 cm.

If we do not want to talk about the artist and want to limit ourselves to observing the painting, there are many suggestions that this leaves us, and from which we can derive many of the examples to which Ferraioli refers during his career.

The landscape is wide, deep, built with a dark but warm tone. The landscape is contrasted by the figures that inhabit it, which stand out against the green of nature in a vivid way: the characters are constructed of very light, cold colors.
Nunzio Ferraioli known as degli Afflitti was a Neapolitan painter by training and spent his youth in the workshops of Luca Giordano first and then Solimena; moved to Bologna we find him in the workshop in 1682 at Giovan Gioseffo Dal Sole. Although the latter master was interested in the human figure, in sacred and mythological compositions with a close cut, Ferraioli derived from him the interest in the study of the landscape, certainly assisted by the collaboration with the contemporary Francesco Monti, with whom he will collaborate on the decoration of numerous Bolognese palaces.

The consecration of the artist takes place thanks to the interest aroused by his works for overseas clients – in particular we recall that of the Irish merchant Oweri Mc Swiny – who saw in his production an echo of the restless and almost pre-romantic style of Salvator Rosa.

Bibl.: R. Buscaroli, La pittura di paesaggio in Italia, Bologna 1935, pp. 370 s.; C. Ricci-G. Zucchini, Guida di Bologna, a cura di A. Emiliani, Bologna 1968, p. 168.

Our reference: A04837