(Ancona 1710–1780 Rome)
A winter landscape with peasants and their live stock,
oil on canvas, 73 x 112 cm, framed

We are grateful to Marietta Vinci for confirming the attribution of the present painting.

This attractive winter landscape is somewhat unusual in its composition; large figures and dominant buildings like those depicted in the present work only appear in a handful of Foschi’s paintings. A similar compositional scheme, but without the peasant cottage, was employed by the artist in a painting sold at Sotheby’s, Paris, in June 2007 (oil on canvas, 100 x 132 cm, lot 32, sold for € 156,000).

Francesco Foschi was born in Ancona in 1710 into a wealthy family. Some of his brothers were also painters, of which the best known was Carlo Foschi who specialised in marine views. Francesco began his training in the studio of Francesco Mancini in Fano. At the outset of his career he enjoyed the support of Count Raimondo Bonaccorsi, whom Foschi helped to assemble a magnificent art collection that included twelve episodes from Ovid’s Metamorphoses by Foschi himself.
In 1729 the artist’s family moved to Rome where the 19-year-old Francesco paid careful attention to the urban view paintings of Panini and Vanvitelli. The influence of the latter’s panoramic scenes is readily evident in View of Loreto with papal Portraits (Palazzo Apostolico, Loreto), a work that also reveals the influence of his master Mancini in the treatment of the figures. In 1744 Foschi married Constanza Scirman in Rome, with whom he had a daughter. In 1750 the artist signed and dated a Winter Landscape (Musée de Grenoble), the first known example of a sub-genre that would become his speciality. Foschi can be considered the Italian virtuoso of winter landscapes. The genre of snowy landscapes had a period of glory in sixteenth and seventeenth century Flanders, but Foschi interpreted them in his own manner and participated in the rediscovery of an aspect of nature neglected by most of his contemporaries.

As is typical of Foschi, the colour range of the present work is limited with an emphasis on whites, a studied range of greys, and a few brown and ochre tones that emphasise small areas of ground not covered by the snow. These tones and Foschi’s precise technique are deployed to achieve outstanding effects among the treetops, the patches of grass, the bare trunks and the heavy sky. Typical also is the way in which the figures provide a sense of the scale of the overwhelming, natural setting, nevertheless conveying a sense of warmth and a tranquillity that appealed to eighteenth-century taste. In 1755 Foschi moved to Pesaro where he lived until 1764, at which date he returned to Rome for the remainder of his life. His obituary, published in the newspaper Ordinario Cracas (11 March 1780), describes him as the “famous painter of winter landscapes”, reflecting on his focus on this type of work in his later years. Luigi Serra’s investigations in the first quarter of the twentieth century were followed by the studies of Bonfrancesco and Marietta Vinci, who set Foschi’s life and work within a broader context.