Capricci with architectural ruins - Alessandro Magnasco (1667- 1749)

Alessandro Magnasco
(Genoa, 4 February 1667 -12 March 1749)

Capricci with architectural ruins and figures

Oil painting on canvas
Early 18th century period
Contemporary walnut frames with Medici coats of arms.
Canvas measures 38 x 27, frames 48 x 37
Very good condition

An extraordinary collection of 10 caprices depicting architectural ruins animated by an infinite and varied array of characters.

The ten canvases, although presenting a single common thread with a practically similar descriptive continuity, differ completely both in the composition of the ruined architecture and in the incredible variety of the figures that enliven the scenes.

In this series of paintings the Author can demonstrate his incomparable creative genius, supported by a pictorial ability of the highest level.

The views present a scenographic richness that leaves the spectator amazed and leads him to continuously search for new details to identify and decipher in the countless skits animated by typical characters from the repertoire of the Great Genoese Master.

Among the different situations, the silhouettes of painters intent on painting in front of the easel stand out, but also the inevitable soldiers, players sitting at tables, musicians and acrobats.

The absolutely visionary and surreal artistic universe of Alessandro Magnasco is represented here in an excellent manner.

The charm of this very rare collection, already of considerable attraction in itself, is increased by the state of conservation of the works, which are presented on first canvas, still fixed on the original fixed frames, without the slightest retouching to the paintings which remained intact and complete with their frames. contemporary.

To this must be added a very interesting and particular note: on the back of the frames the Medici coats of arms are branded, which certifies the dating of the works in the first 10 years of the 18th century, the period spent by Magnasco at the Court of the Medici, under the wing
protector of Grand Prince Ferdinand.

The hypothesis that the 10 canvases could be the 10 preparatory sketches, executed with great effectiveness, for the creation of large-scale works commissioned by Ferdinando de' Medici is very suggestive.

In any case, we prefer to keep the collection as a whole together, avoiding dispersing the separate paintings, to safeguard the artistic completeness and historicity of the collection, to be considered as a unique work.

Author's biography:
Alessandro Magnasco was born in Genoa on 4 February 1667, son of Stefano Magnasco and Livia Caterina Musso.
Following the death of his father, also a painter and pupil of Valerio Castello, the very young Alessandro moved to Milan in 1682, to the workshop of Filippo Abbiati.
Here he is influenced above all by contemporary Venetian painting and by his Baroque style
master.
His paintings, made of pasty and flaking material, release violent contrasts in both color and light and will also have a strong influence on the painting of his contemporaries, in particular the Venetian Marco Ricci.
Considered one of the most original artists of the Italian eighteenth century, he stands out in popular genre painting. The brushstroke, always full of chiaroscuro effects and glimpses of light in the darkness, tends to depict dark environments with elongated and distorted figures, anticipating the expressionist painting of subsequent centuries.

- Magnasco in Milan -
His first works were commissioned portraits, a genre he soon abandoned to dedicate himself to landscapes with scenes animated by lanky figures of friars, gypsies, soldiers, woodcutters and acrobats, inserted in large and gloomy scenarios. His canvases are set above all in contexts that describe stormy landscapes, dark woods, or disturbing conventual settings.
In the creation of works with ruins and architecture he often makes use of the collaboration of some specialists, such as Clemente Spera and Antonio Francesco Peruzzini. He collaborated intensely with the latter, leaving his colleague to depict the extraordinary tree-lined compositions with the very tall branches that stand out against the light against the bright blue skies.

- At the Medici court -
From 1703 to 1710 Magnasco settled in Florence in the service of Grand Prince Ferdinando de' Medici, eldest son of Cosimo III and a passionate patron and collector. In Florence Magnasco 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 "charged and playful" painting, including Stefano della Bella, Salvator Rosa, Giuseppe Maria Crespi and Giovanni Domenico Ferretti, all frequenters of the court of the last Medici grand dukes.
In 1711, having returned to Milan, he was called to carry out the decoration for the triumphal entry of Emperor Charles VI into the city.

- Restless spirit -
His painting is often compared to that of restless spirits such as the visionary Monsù Desiderio, or to the great masterpieces of El Greco, from which however the
Magnasco stood out for his personal vision of light, even in the small eighteenth-century "genre" paintings, with vignettes that express strong drama combined with a rococo taste, typically scenographic and theatrical.