ANDREA LOCATELLI (Rome, 1695 - 1741)

Landscape of Lazio with shepherds and a ruined castle

Oil on canvas, cm. 100x120. Framed

This large canvas can fully be counted among the masterpieces of Andrea Locatelli and stands out within that crucial area of ​​his production dedicated to the representation of the Lazio countryside, with its reliefs, its ruins, its villages in the distance and of course with the quiet and discreet presence of its shepherds. In the wake of Van Bloemen, Locatelli's Arcadian poetry finds in this wide, solemn and light-filled landscape a perfect fulfillment, to which the "emperor" measures of the canvas give a breath and a monumentality that finds few comparisons in the production of author. As reported by Busiri Vici in his pioneering monograph, Locatelli made two versions of this so successful composition that are almost identical and of similar quality: ours and the one today at the Borgogna Museum in Vercelli, of even greater dimensions. The scholar plausibly placed the two canvases around 1725-30, at the height of Locatelli's artistic maturity.
LITERATURE: M. Mosco, Les trois maniéres d'Andrea Locatelli, in "Revue de l'Art", n. 7, 1970, fig. 27; A. Busiri Vici, Andrea Locatelli e il paesaggio romano del Settecento, Ugo Bozzi Editore, Roma 1976, pp. 94-95, fig. 113, e cat. n. 55. PROVENANCE: Private collection, Rome.