Landscape with Figures
Landscape with Figures
- Artist
- Alessandro Magnasco and Antonio Francesco Peruzzini
- Artist Dates
- 1667-1749 and 1646/1647-1724
- Artist Nationality
- Italian
- Title
- Landscape with Figures
- Date
- about 1713 / 1714
- Medium
- oil on canvas
- Dimensions
- 145.8 x 116.4 cm (57-3/8 x 45-7/8 in)
- K Number
- K1114
- Repository
- Birmingham Museum of Art
- Accession Number
- 1961.11
- Notes
Provenance
(Arthur Sambon, Paris). [1] Italico Brass, Venice, by 1923; (Count Alessandro Contini Bonacossi [1878-1955], Rome-Florence); sold to Samuel H. Kress [1863-1955] on 16 June 1937 as Alessandro Magnasco; gift to the National Gallery of Art in 1939; deaccessioned in 1952 and returned to the Samuel H. Kress Foundation; gift to Birmingham Museum of Art in 1961, no. 61.110. [1] This painting was not included in the Galerie Sambon exhibition of Magnasco held in Paris 22 May-12 June 1929.
Catalogue Entry
Alessandro Magnasco and Antonio Francesco Peruzzini
Landscape with Figures
K1114
Birmingham, Ala., Birmingham Museum of Art (61.110), since 1952.(1) Canvas. 58 1/2 x 46 3/4 in. (148.6 x 118.8 cm.). Good condition. The attribution of K1114 to Magnasco is accepted without question, and the date proposed is before the artist left Milan for Florence in 1703.(2) The Arcadian mood of the picture contrasts with the fantastic and dramatic subjects usually associated with his later career. A drawing in the Uffizi(3) is evidently a study, followed very closely, for the woman in full profile washing clothes in K1114. X-ray of this woman in the painting brings out clearly Magnasco's solid modeling of forms. The group of a man and woman at the lower right is repeated in a horizontal painting of St. Anthony Preaching to the Fish, formerly belonging to Luigi Podio, Venice;(4) and all the figures in K1114 are repeated in a horizontal composition, Landscape with Washerwomen and Figures in Repose recently exhibited in Milan.(5) Provenance: A. Sambon, Paris. Private Collection, Venice. Contini Bonacossi, Florence. Kress acquisition, 1937 –exhibited: National Gallery of Art, Washington, D.C. (476), 1941-52.(6)
References
(1) Catalogue by W. E. Suida, 1952, p. 63, and 1959, p. 91, as Magnasco. (2) For this suggestion as to date see Suida, loc. cit. in note 1, above. Others who have attributed K1114 to Magnasco are G. Fiocco, R. Longhi, F. M. Perkins, A. Venturi (in ms. opinions), and B. Geiger (Magnasco, 1949, p. 153). (3) Reproduced by M. Pospisil, Magnasco, 1944, pl. 220. (4) Reproduced by Geiger, pls. 48 and 476 of op. cit. in note 2, above. (5) 'Dipinti di Due Secoli,' Palazzo Serbelloni, Milan, Nov. 16-Dec. 1, 1963, pl. 16. (6) Prelimillary Catalogue, 1941, p. 119, as Magnasco.