PIETRO BERRETTINI, CALLED PIETRO DA CORTONA | Mountainous landscape with a waterfall, with fishermen in the foreground

The canvas has a very firm relining, the paint surface is slightly dirty and the varnish is slightly discoloured. Inspection under ultraviolet light reveals little retouching save for a horizontal line along the upper margin, possibly due to an old tear measuring approx. 15 cm., a short diagonal line of retouching in the landscape to the right of the waterfall, and a small area of retouching to the left of the waterfall, an even smaller patch in the lower part of the water itself, and two very small retouchings to former losses in the landscape upper left. The majority of the painting is untouched and in good overall condition. Offered in a carved and gilt wood frame in good condition.
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The attribution has been independently endorsed by Professor Erich Schleier and Dr. Nicholas Turner after viewing the work in person. Both scholars compare the painting to two drawings by Cortona in the British Museum, London. The Wooded river landscape with fishermen by a cascade, like the present work, shows a waterfall at the centre of the composition, while the drawing showing Two architects submitting a plan to Pope Alexander VII, with Mount Athos in the distance also includes a torrent of water crashing down the mountainside.¹ Schleier proposes that this painting is a youthful work, possibly from the 1620s, when the artist painted two small landscapes on panel for the Sacchetti brothers.² These panels, now in the Capitoline Gallery in Rome, show a coastal landscape and a wooded river landscape. Schleier further points to similarities with the Allumiere di Tolfa, also in the Capitoline Gallery, in which the rock formations are handled in a comparable way to the present work.

1 See N. Turner, Roman Baroque Drawings, c. 1620 to c. 1700, London 1999, vol. I, pp. 54–55, cat. nos 82 and 83, reproduced vol. II.
2 See S. Guarino, in Pietro da Cortona, A. Lo Bianco (ed.), exh. cat., Milan 1997, pp. 326–27, cat. nos 29 and 30, reproduced.
3 Ibid., p. 328, cat. no. 31, reproduced.