Marco Ricci

Believed to have been acquired by the grandfather of the present owner in the 1920s.

This hitherto unpublished capriccio by Marco Ricci is entirely characteristic, though these scenes are more usually seen in his temperas than in his oil paintings. They combine architectural and sculptural elements that illustrate Ricci’s interest in the antique, and it seems likely that he travelled to Rome (probably before 1700) though no such trip is documented. Ricci's capricci were to have a lasting influence even on artists working outside Venice, Andrea Locatelli being one of them. Busiri Vici suggests Ricci may have gone to Rome after 1720 and may therefore have seen Locatelli’s capricci, but Scarpa Sonino believes the influence between the two would have been the other way around, arguing for a hypothetical visit to Rome in Ricci's youth. Her theory is more convincing as Ricci is much more likely to have travelled there as a young man, and his compositions would therefore have been known to artists, in painted or engraved form, by the third decade of the 18th century.

Certain compositional elements in this painting recur in other paintings and temperas by Ricci, and this repetition of motifs seems to have been his normal working practice. The gothic church façade and campanile visible in the distance, for instance, reappear as a backdrop in a tempera by Ricci in a London private collection (see A. Scarpa Sonino, Marco Ricci, Milan 1991, p. 144, cat. no. T 9, reproduced p. 242, fig. 124), and in another in a Milanese private collection (see A. Delneri, in Marco Ricci e il paesaggio veneto del Settecento, exhibition catalogue, Belluno, Palazzo Crepadona, 15 May – 22 August 1993, p. 239, cat. no. 4354, reproduced in colour p. 240). The lion statue is a recurring motif in many of Ricci’s capricci and the same sculpture as that shown here (where the lion’s head is turned sharply to the right) recurs in Ricci’s tempera sold, New York, Sotheby’s, 22 January 2004, lot 68 (and Giuliano Giampiccoli’s engraving after it, reproduced in Scarpa Sonino, op. cit., p. 329, fig. 310), and in a painting, conceived as one of a pair, in the collection of Laura Biagiotti, Guidonia (Rome) (ibid., p. 124, cat. no. O 44, reproduced in colour p. 109, plate XXXVI). The equestrian statue and similar architectural fragments and bas-reliefs to those in the present painting occur in its pendant, also in the Biagiotti collection (ibid., p. 124, cat. no. O 43, reproduced in colour p. 108, plate XXXV; also published, with its pendant, by Delneri, op. cit., p. 221, cat. nos. 34 and 35, reproduced in colour p. 222). Both canvases are late works by the artist and have been dated by Scarpa Sonino to after 1723; a date which also seems plausible for the present canvas. Here, as in the Biagiotti pair, the figures appear to have been painted by Marco Ricci; an unusual occurrence as he more often collaborated with his uncle Sebastiano, the latter contributing the figures to Marco's landscapes. The closest comparison to the present painting, in its elongated format and open composition, is a capriccio in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle (Scarpa Sonino, op. cit., p. 138, cat. no. O 116, reproduced p. 342, fig. 336). The Windsor capriccio is part of a set of four canvases that once belonged to Consul Joseph Smith and were sold by him in 1762. Also datable to the last five years of Ricci’s life, after the “McSwinney tombs", the Windsor capriccio shares this painting’s rosy hues and warm atmospheric light; something which further argues for a dating in the last five years of the artist’s life.

The attribution to Marco Ricci has been endorsed by Dottssa. Anna Scarpa Sonino on the basis of photographs (private communication to the owner).