Offered by Antichità Castelbarco
Claude Joseph Vernet (Avignon 1714 - Paris 1789) Follower of
Navy with Storm and Shipwreck
oil on canvas
103 x 140 cm.
framed 120 x 155 cm.
The painting depicts a beautiful marina set in a Mediterranean harbour, which has just been crossed by an intense storm and where the still stormy sea is crashing against the rocks.
This is a scene of shipwreck, in the aftermath of the storm, with a sailing ship about to be sucked out of the sea after crashing onto the rocks, while a lifeboat laden with shipwrecked sailors tries to gain the shore.
The large size of the canvas has allowed the author to describe with great generosity of detail a varied sequence of scenes imbued with phatos, allowing us to participate in the drama of the characters in front of the grandiose spectacle of nature.
The dark bulk of a lantern and the remains of an ancient classical temple with tall columns stand out on the shore, made all the more striking by the precarious weather conditions, with lightning ripping through the black clouds to strike the coast.
The canvas is attributed, in terms of composition and style, to a follower of Claude Joseph Vernet (Avignon 1714 - Paris 1789).
Remarkably beautiful, the painting highlights all the pictorial and descriptive characteristics of the great master's marinas, later taken up by his pupils and followers to meet the countless demands of his patrons. Among them we can mention the Italians Carlo Bonavia and Francesco Fidanza (1747-1819), who painted in his wake, as we can see for instance in ‘Marina in tempesta con naufragio’(https://catalogo.fondazionezeri.unibo.it/scheda/opera/66754/).
His marinas were very fashionable at the time, a genre loved by the English nobility and Northern Europeans who came to Italy on the Grand Tour and who often returned home with paintings as souvenirs evoking Italian landscapes (in this regard, note for instance the inclusion of the ruins of a temple, fantastically placed on the cliff).
The true magic of the painting is the painter's highly personal use of light and colours, rendered intense by a palette of vibrant hues, with chiaroscuro effects that accentuate its three-dimensionality and movement.
In our case, the work derives in particular from ‘The Tempest. Marina with Storm and Shipwrecked Ship' by Claude Joseph Vernet, whose location is unknown today, but of which an engraving by Balechou Jean Joseph
Delevery information :
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