Paintings Drawings Sculptures 2016 - Jean Luc Baroni

Francesco Zuccarelli, R.A.
Pitigliano, Umbria 1702 - 1788 Florence
8
A River Landscape with a Cavalier and his Dogs by a Fountain
Oil on canvas.
52 x 94 cm (20 ½ x 37 in.)
Provenance: Private Collection, New York.
Zuccarelli made his reputation in Venice as a painter
of Arcadian landscapes but he also achieved great
popularity in England where he spent two extended
periods, becoming in 1768, a founding member of the
Royal Academy of Arts. He first studied in Rome, and
his style was based upon an understanding of Roman
classicism and the 17 th century landscape school of
Claude Lorrain. Zuccarelli also spent time in Florence
where he was commissioned by the connoisseur
Francisco Maria Niccolo Gabburi to make a large
series of etchings recording the deteriorating frescoes
of Andrea del Sarto and Giovanni di San Giovanni.
Zuccarelli is said to have been encouraged to paint
landscapes by the Roman artist Paolo Anesi and
following a stay in Bologna, he moved to Venice
continuing in the landscape genre and studying the
work of Marco Ricci and Alessandro Magnasco. Ricci’s
death in 1730 gave Zuccarelli the opportunity to be
noticed in this field and collectors such as Consul
Smith, Marshal Schulenburg and Francesco Algarotti
became eager patrons. In the 1740s he collaborated
with Antonio Visentini on a series of works ranging
from the grand, large-scale decorative views with
Palladian style architectural elements which are now
in Burlington House to a set of playing cards. Consul
Smith commissioned both projects as well as the series
of seven paintings now at Windsor Castle which are
considered to be Zuccarelli’s greatest achievement.
refined landscape convention which had begun with
Claude Lorrain.
Dr. Federica Spadotto, author of the recent monograph
on the artist 1 , considers this to be a superb example
of the artist’s work, datable to the 1750s and typical
of his mature style with its atmospheric effect of hazy
light 2 . Dr. Spadotto will be publishing the picture in
her forthcoming volume dedicated to Zuccarelli’s
Venetian landscapes. She points out the exquisite
softness of touch and light handling. The evidence of
Zuccarelli’s English period is visible in the depiction
of the elegant horseman with his dogs, telling perhaps
of the artist’s encounter with George Stubbs. The
equine subject was particularly appreciated by English
collectors while the picturesque washerwomen in the
foreground are an element typical of Zuccarelli’s own
arcadian evocations which as Dr. Spadotto describes
are poised harmoniously between reality and dream.
Zuccarelli spent ten years in England, from 1752 and
on returning to Venice in 1762 he only remained there
for three years, becoming a member of the Venetian
Academy, before being enticed back to London by
his friend Algarotti. During this second extended stay,
King George III became his most enthusiastic patron.
His long career was completed by a further decade in
Venice before his final return to Florence. Though his
reputation declined in the 19 th century, as the taste for
realism established itself, during his lifetime Zuccarelli
was extremely influential; his graceful, subtly coloured,
pastorals with their sophisticated poetry of landscape,
figures and architectural detail were the essence of the
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