Giovanni Ghisolfi

Bologna, Private collection, c. 1986.

F. Arisi, Gian Paolo Panini e i Fasti della Roma del' 700, Rome, 1986, p. 240, nos. 47 and 48, reproduced (as by Panini);
D. R. Marshall, "The Architectural Piece in 1700: The Paintings of Alberto Carlieri (1672-c. 1720), Pupil of Andrea Pozzo", in Artibus et Historiae, no. 50 (XXV), Vienna-Cracow, 2004, p. 121 (as by Ghisolfi).

Both paintings are relined. Overall, paintings present a strong pair and lovely images. Paint has thinned somewhat in the middle of canvas, more specifically under the left sky. In painting with main ruins to the left, U.V. reveals numerous retouches throughout sky, though applied well and in small brushstrokes with no major patches of repair. In canvas with main architecture to the right, main areas of retouching are also mostly in the sky and thin. Area just to the left of arch has larger patch of repair, as well as passages through columns. Both pictures in carved and giltwood frames with minor abrasions.
In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective qualified opinion.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING CONDITION OF A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD "AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF SALE PRINTED IN THE CATALOGUE.

A forerunner to Giovanni Panini and Alberto Carlieri, Giovanni Ghisolfi was one of the most eminent and influential veduta painters of the mid-late Baroque period in Italy¹. After training under his uncle in Milan, he travelled to Rome at the age of 17 to perfect his talent for landscape painting and architectural capricci. The present pair of paintings aptly exhibits many of the characteristics that secured Ghisolfi's reputation and won him important commissions for an extensive series of decorative landscape frescoes at the Palazzo Trissino Baston and Palazzo Giustiniani Baggio in Vicenza and the Palazzo Borromeo Arese at Cesano Maderno, near Milan.

In the coastal setting of the first canvas, the central episode with the fish draws upon Biblical iconography of St Peter or St Andrew. It is closely affiliated to another Ghisolfi canvas, formerly in the Almagià collection and traditionally entitled The Parable of the Fish², though, as Rowlands points out, no such specific Bible episode exists³. David Marshall references the original pairing of the Alamagià work with Pythagoras Emerging from his Subterranean Cave to suggest that its composition, and by extension the comparable present scene, may rather be renditions of Pythagoras and the Fisherman. Both Pythagoras subjects, based on the writings of Diogenes Laertius, were first interpreted as a pair by Salvator Rosa in 1662 (Forth Worth, Kimbel Art Foundation⁴ and Berlin, Staatliche Museen^5). Since Ghisolfi was in contact with Rosa in Rome in the early 1650's and much influenced by his work, it seems credible that he responded to Rosa's Pythagoras subjects.

With little distinction in the central figure's robes between classical and biblical attire, the present painting nevertheless retains a spirit of  poetic vagueness. In its array of Classical architectural elements, the scene incorportates characteristic Ghisolfi motifs such as the far right tower based on the Torre di San Vicenzo in Naples destroyed in 1748 and the column capitals of the ruin in the middle background which imitate the Temple of Saturn in the Roman Forum. 

The rustic sphere of the second canvas is similarly permeated by an elegiac ambiguity as dancing figures in antique dress and a distant herdsman fashion a pastoral idyll. As with many of Ghisolfi's works, this scene may have no explicit subject and may simply mark one of the artist's picturesque assemblages of Rosaesque figure types.

For all their topical equivocation, both the present works present fine examples of Ghisolfi's consolidation of the Italian capriccio aesthetic which not only elevated the idealised, lyrical landscape but also regenerated interest in antique architecture and Roman archaeology.

We are grateful to Dr. David R. Marshall for having endorsed the attribution to Giovanni Ghisolfi based on photographs and for his help in cataloguing these paintings which he dates to the 1650's-1660's.


1. For further discussion of the artist's influence and association with Panini, see D. R. Marshall, "Early Panini Reconsidered: The Esztergom Preaching of an Apostle and the Relationship between Panini and Ghisolfi", Artibus et Historiae, no. 36 (XVIII), 1997, pp. 137-199.
2. Arisi, op. cit., no. 42.
3. See E. W. Rowlands, The Collections of the Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art. Italian Paintings 1300-1800, Kansas City, 1996.
4. L. Salerno, L'Opera Completa di Salvator Rosa, Milan, 1975, no.165.
5.  Idem., no. 164.