Carlo Bonavia Active in Naples during the second half of the 18th Century

Surprisingly little is known about the life of Carlo Bonavia, although increasing numbers of his highly attractive paintings have come to light. He is thought to be from Rome, but worked in Naples circa 1751 to 1788, the years of his earliest and latest dated paintings. He appears to have been trained in the Neapolitan landscape tradition of Salvator Rosa and Leonardo Coccorante (1680-1750) but was much more strongly influenced by the work of Claude-Joseph Vernet, who was in Naples in 1737 and 1746. Bonavia’s paintings share with Vernet’s a delicious Rococo palette of pale blues, creamy yellows, pinks and soft green, as well as an atmospheric, rather than analytical, approach to landscape. Like Vernet, Bonavia painted capricci in which real features of the Neapolitan countryside – such as Virgil’s Tomb – are placed in imaginary settings.

 Bonavia’s idyllic landscapes were popular with the Grand Tourists who flocked to Naples in the eighteenth century. Among his patrons were Lord Brudenell, who commissioned an Eruption of Vesuvius (signed and dated 1757, Lord Montagu Collection, Beaulieu). The artist also had a major patron in Graf Karl Joseph Firmian, Austrian ambassador to Naples 1753-8, who owned seventeen of his works, amongst them landscapes, mythological and literary subjects.