17th Century, Italian Battle Between Christian And Turkish Cavalry

17TH Century, Italian Oil on Canvas Painting with Battle between Christian and Turkish cavalry

The oil on canvas painting depicts a battle between Christian and Turkish cavalry. Characterized by a strong dynamism, the main scene occupies the lower horizontal section of the canvas. In the background is the continuation of the clash just outside the walls of a city whose towers delimit the horizon. On the left some hills fade on the horizon. The sky is marked by clouds of serene contrast with the black smoke of the battle.
Stylistically the painting can be traced back to a painter active in Italy in the seventeenth century, continuator of the major interpreter of the genre, Jacques Courtois called Il Borgognone (Saint-Hyppolite 1621 - Rome 1676). The genre of battle painting met with great success in the collections of the Italian and European nobility of the 17th and 18th centuries and there are many painters who ventured in this thematic genre.
The battles of the Italian Renaissance, in which the scene converged towards a precise protagonist, evolved in the seventeenth century towards a type of combat "without hero". The bloody realism of the details and the dynamic development of the narrative confuse the figure of the protagonist, when present, to give importance to the swirl of horses and armed fighters, among which, moreover, does not emerge a winner.
It is currently the drafting of expertise of the work useful to identify the hand of the painter through historical artistic studies; in addition, new images will soon be inserted.