Alessandro Magnasco, called il Lissandrino, and Antonio Francesco Peruzzini Ancona c.1646 - 1724 Milan Genoa 1667 - 1749

Formerly Italico Brass (senior), Venice;
Thence by descent.

G. Delogu, Pittori minori liguri, lombardi, piemontesi del Seicento e Settecento, Venice 1931, p. 128, a detail reproduced plate 174 (rectangular);
M. Pospisil, Magnasco, Florence 1944, p. LXXXVI, no. 186, reproduced plate 186 (rectangular);
B. Geiger, Magnasco, Bergamo 1949, p. 144, reproduced in colour plate 311 (rectangular);
R. Roli, Alessandro Magnasco, Milan 1964, reproduced plate IX (oval, according to Muti & De Sarno Prignano);
L. Muti & D. De Sarno Prignano, Alessandro Magnasco, Faenza 1994, p. 269, cat. no. 403, reproduced p. 420, fig. 212 (oval, as location unknown) and p. 259, cat. no. 341, reproduced p. 421, fig. 213 (rectangular).

The characteristic vigour of Magnasco's painting technique led to him being extremely successful in his own day, though his artistic personality was largely ignored during the second half of the 18th and the entire 19th Century. It was not until Benno Geiger's "rediscovery" of the artist in the early 20th Century that Magnasco resumed his rightful place in the history of North Italian landscape painting. Alessandro was born in Genoa, the son of the painter Stefano Magnasco, and he probably travelled to Milan as a young man in 1681-82. There he worked as a figure-painter (figurista) for a number of landscapists, collaborating with the architectural-painter Clemente Spera and the landscape-painter Antonio Francesco Peruzzini, as attested to by the biographer Carlo Giuseppe Ratti (1737-1795). It was not until the 1720s that Magnasco painted his own landscape settings for his figures. From 1703 to 1709 Magnasco was in Florence, working alongside Peruzzini at the Medici court for Ferdinando de' Medici. When Magnasco returned to Milan in 1709 it is likely that his collaboration with Peruzzini continued for some time, though Peruzzini, who was Magnasco's senior by twenty years, probably did not remain active right up until his death in 1724.

This canvas is a fine example of the collaboration between Magnasco and Peruzzini and is likely to date from the first decade of the 18th Century, when they were both active in Florence. Though few biographical details relating to Peruzzini are known, we know that he worked alongside Sebastiano Ricci and indeed a number of works testify to this collaboration: see, for example, Peruzzini and Ricci's painting of The Temptation of St. Anthony, itself greatly influenced by Magnasco's paintings (private collection; see C. Geddo, in Alessandro Magnasco 1667-1749, exh. cat., Milan, Palazzo Reale, 21 March - 7 July 1996, pp. 334-5, cat. no. 114, reproduced in colour). The most fruitful collaboration of all, however, would be that with Magnasco; the latter's figures working in perfect harmony with the nervous energy of Peruzzini's landscapes.

Muti and De Sarno Prignano catalogued this picture as two separate works (see Literature below) due to the painting's current oval format. It is likely that the painting was made up to a rectangle at some point in the past, returning to its original oval format after 1949, and that the painting in its two forms, known to Muti and De Sarno Prignano only from photographs, were subsequently confused: this hypothesis has recently been confirmed by Dottssa. Fausta Franchini Guelfi, to whom we are grateful (private communication). The Literature listed below is distinguished by a description in brackets of whether the painting was published in its oval or rectangular form.