(Belluno 1676–1730)
A landscape with hermits, shepherds, cattle and a washerwoman,
oil on canvas, 74.5 x 99.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
European Private Collection

According to Abbot Girardi, a biographer, Marco Ricci studied with his uncle, Sebastiano Ricci, excelling in the depiction of architectural images and especially of landscapes (see P. E. Girardi, Descrizione de’ cartoni disegnati da Carlo Cignani e de’ quadri dipinti da Sebastiano Ricci posseduti dal Signor Giuseppe Smith Console della Gran Bretagna, Venice 1749, p. 74). He also studied with Antonio Francesco Peruzzini, the landscape painter from Ancona who often collaborated with Sebastiano Ricci in the last decade of the 17th century.

Marco Ricci’s training took place under the aegis of these two celebrated artists, who collaborated to create works that were commissioned for the most prestigious Italian collections of paintings, such as that of the Counts Ranuzzi in Bologna, of the Grand Prince Ferdinand of Tuscany and of the Marquesses Pagani in Milan. An important element in Marco’s artistic influence was the time-honoured 16th century tradition of Venetian landscape painting, mainly known through the study of Titian, Domenico Campagnola and Nicolo’ Boldrini: on the basis of their examples, the artist discovered the new expressive potential of autonomous landscape painting, a genre which, in 17th century Italy, had found its models in the remote scenes of innocence, solemnity and nostalgic beauty that characterised the works of Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorrain and Gaspard Dughet.

The present painting documents Marco Ricci’s approach to landscape painting in an early phase of his career, in which Venetian components are combined with elements derived from Roman classicism. In this case, the latter is especially evident in the choice of the figures freely modeled after Dughet’s Arcadian scenes.

Typical of Ricci is the compositional structure and the warm light that pervades the painting, accompanying the unfolding of the hilly landscape from the mossy semi-darkness in the foreground to the golden glows that the quiet watercourse reflects under a sky with sparse, soft clouds. The quality and nature of the pictorial execution suggest its dating to the early 18th century, to a phase that precedes the paintings currently preserved at the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden (see D. Succi/A. Delneri, Marco Ricci e il paesaggio veneto del Settecento, Milan 1993, pp. 87–91 and 180–183).

We are grateful to Dario Succi for his assistance in cataloguing this lot.