(Città di Castello 1749–1819 Milan)
A moonlit river landscape with fishermen working by torchlight, the Temple of Vesta in the right background,
oil on canvas, 55.5 x 71.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Marietta Vinci Corsini for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a high resolution digital photograph.

This almost dreamy nocturnal scene is set on the shore of a river, lit by a full moon, with fishermen bringing in their nets by torchlight in the left middle ground. A single fisherman is standing on the shore in the immediate foreground, acting as a repoussoir. The well-balanced composition is structured around the figure of this lone fisherman standing in a central position. Like Claude Joseph Vernet, Charles François Lacroix (‘Lacroix de Marseille’) and Francesco Foschi, Fidanza would habitually frame his landscapes using a broad central view with a tree, boat, or monument, or, as in this case, with high rising rocky cliffs, according to a format that appealed to clients and became highly successful. The ruins of the temple at the edge of the cliffs bear resemblance with the Temple of Vesta in Tivoli.

Fidanza’s elegant oeuvre consists almost exclusively of seascapes in the style of Vernet. He studied drawing with his father Filippo, who had been a pupil of Claude Joseph Vernet and from whom he inherited a love of landscape painting. Landscapes were highly fashionable at the time, and were a favourite genre of nobility from Britain and Northern Europe who came to Italy on the Grand Tour and who would often return home with such paintings as souvenirs. These were not commissioned as merely decorative items but represented a personal gallery of experiences and images of the most significant sites encountered during their long sojourns. The inclusion of the Vesta temple in the present example suggests that this was a commission from a wealthy Grand Tour traveller. Nocturnal landscapes, together with winter landscapes, formed a particularly popular sub-genre. Fidanza, with his ability to create a misty and even mystical atmosphere, combining the romantic sense of the sublime with explicit references to reality, was very successful in this field. At the beginning of the new century Fidanza went to Paris. There he met an important patron, Count Sommariva, who commissioned him to paint a large number of canvases for his villa on Lake Como. While Vernet had been contracted by Louis XV to depict French ports, Fidanza was asked by Prince Eugène de Beauharnais - at that time Viceroy of Italy - to remain in his native land and paint views of the new kingdom’s ports. He only completed six of these due to the fall of the Kingdom of Italy in 1814. Two paintings still exist today, while the others remain unidentified. Among the best-known of the works by Fidanza is the Stormy Seascape and View of an Estuary, in the Galleria Nazionale at the Palazzo Corsini, Rome (see S. Alloisi, Quadri senza casa dai depositi della Galleria Corsini, exhibition catalogue, Rome 1993). Others include the Seascape with a Sailing Boat and Fishermen in the Allomello collection (see S. Rudolph, La pittura del ‘700 a Roma, Milan 1983, no. 259); and the Seascape with a Tower and Seascape with Lighthouse formerly with the Galleria Lampronti in Rome (see G. Sestieri, Repertorio della pittura romana della fine del Seicento e del Settecento, Turin 1994, vol. I, p. 73, vol. II, figs. 411, 412). The Galleria d’Arte Moderna in Milan owns three seascapes.