Carlo Bossoli Italian, 1815-1884

Carlo Bossoli is considered one of the greatest Italian vedutisti of the nineteenth century. Born in Davesco, near Lugano, his family emigrated to Odessa in 1820. Bossoli started his professional life working in a print shop, but soon began to paint and draw himself. His talent was spotted by the Crimean nobleman Count Vronzov, who sent him to Naples and Rome to perfect his technique. Following his artistic studies in Italy, Bossoli secured some commissions from Queen Victoria, which resulted in extensive travels throughout Europe, Russia, Turkey, North Africa and the Middle East. Due to the corpus of work that Bossoli produced in those years he has often been considered as a reporter ante litteram.

Córdoba with its exotic mixture of Caifal, Byzantine and Hispano-Romanic architecture seems to have captured Bossoli's imagination. The city’s period of glory began in the 8^th century after the Moorish conquest, when Abderramán had numerous mosques and palaces built to rival the splendours of Constantinople, Damascus and Baghdad. In the 13^th century, under Ferdinand III, a Cathedral was added to the complex of Córdoba’s Great Mosque and new defensive structures such as the Alcázar de los Reyes Cristianos and the Torre Fortaleza de la Calahorra were erected.

Bossoli fittingly has placed the Mosque of Aljama with the Christian cathedral at its heart in the centre of the present composition. Painting the city from across the Guadalquivir river allowed him to capture the historic centre of Córdoba and its city walls as well as the Roman Bridge and the Fortress Tower of Calahorra, thus depicting the major architectural sights of the city within one panoramic view. The incredible precision and attention to detail that are typical of Bossoli’s best paintings, together with the coming and goings of colourful travellers in the foreground, enliven the scene.