anticSwiss 26/09/2021 16:03:50 http://www.anticswiss.com

Alessandro Magnasco, Internal clearing of the camp

FOR SALE ANTIQUE DEALER Period: 17° secolo -1600 Ars Antiqua srl Milano Style: Altri stili +39 02 29529057 393664680856 Height:110cm Width:98cm Material:Olio su tela Price:8000€

DETAILED DESCRIPTION:

Alessandro Magnasco ( 1667-1749), attr. Camp scene Oil on canvas, 110 x 98 cm

The unpublished depicts a spectacular monumental interior where hordes of soldiers, vagabonds, beggars and storytellers are crystallized in a multitude of activities typical of a camp. In the work, based on the stylistic and formal characteristics, we can clearly identify the hand of Alessandro Magnasco which can be contextualized in the first decade of the eighteenth century, during his stay at the Florentine court. Magnasco, known as Lissandrino, is considered one of the most original painters of the Italian eighteenth century. Moving from Genoa to in 1682, he was a pupil of and came into contact with contemporary Venetian painting made of color and light. From 1703 to 1710 Magnasco was in , in the service of Ferdinando de 'Medici, at whose court he came across a series of painters and engravers who between the 17th and 18th centuries had dedicated themselves to the development of the so- called genre of painting " charged and playful "like Stefano della Bella, Jacques Callot, : landscapes with scenes animated by small figures of friars, gypsies, woodcutters and acrobats inserted in large scenarios. The realization of the work in question takes place in this period. In 1711, when he returned to Milan, he was called to perform the decoration for the triumphal entry of Emperor Charles VI. He returned to Genoa in his sixties, in 1735, where he performed the Entertainment in a garden of Albaro, preserved in the Gallery of , a portrait of the decadent Genoese aristocracy. The work combines a realistic descriptive approach with a fast and expressionist painting: an unusual combination, of which however we know Alessandro Magnasco is capable. He paints iconographies largely anti-academic and desecrating, destined for an intellectual commission, also certainly influenced by the Spanish picaresque literature of the seventeenth century and by the contemporary Italian production of popular texts such as the widespread Vagabondo by Raffaele Frianoro

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(1640). On the figurative side, notable influences by Callot can be found in the present work of the Master, who had certainly been able to view the works of the French artist preserved in the Medici collections. Among the most similar interiors in the Lissandrino catalog, especially for the compositional aspects, the canvas depicting the meeting of gypsies preserved in the Gallery in Florence or the one depicting the meeting of soldiers preserved at the Stuttgart Museum: some elements that define the unmistakable handwriting of Magnasco: the little girl dancing in the center of the composition, the mother holding the naked child in the background on the left, the robbers partially hidden by a blanket with their unmistakable hats in the foreground on the left or the little girl who he holds out his hand to a birdcage in the back wall. The same architectural elements and furnishings also return: from the drums hanging on the walls to the broken crockery, as can also be seen in the canvas preserved at the Bellini Gallery in Florence, The magic lantern, where we also find children in similar attitudes. Further elements that recur in the works composed in the same years are the copper pots and the stone coats of arms carved on the masonry, as can also be seen in the painting depicting the Storytellers preserved in the Warsaw Museum. Forerunner of romantic painting, Magnasco is often associated with visionary minds of his contemporaries, such as Monsù Bernardo and El Greco. The painting, along with a few others from the period, testifies to a crucial moment in Magnasco's formation. Author of a very particular painting, based on strong chiaroscuro contrasts, with resolute and quick touches and small but lively and vibrant figures, confirms in this work the originality of the subjects that made him a famous and sought-after artist already in his time . https://www.anticswiss.com/en/fine-art-antiques/alessandro-magnasco-internal-clearing-of-the-camp-23435

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