oil on canvas, 82 x 118 cm
framed cm. 98 x 134

Work accompanied by a critical study by Prof. Giancarlo Sestieri

This important war scene is a clear testimony of Ilario Mercanti (Parma 1657 - 1734) better known with the name of Spolverini.

The composition shows in the foreground in the center a dead knight on the ground knocked down with his horse, and a little further on the left a cannon with artillerymen who, under the watchful eye of a commander with a big red flag on his shoulder, are ready to firing, following the instructions of a leader riding a black horse seen from behind, having on his right a handful of horsemen with a trumpeter and a flag carrier. To these figures 'all round' that stand out in the foreground, follows the representation of a dense movement of cavalry that move on a plain crossed on the bottom by a river with a bridge with several arches, behind which is outlined a profile urban with a high quadrangular tower soaring and fortifications on a hill to the right, which can be identified with the city of Parma.

A wide-ranging scene that recalls in part the episodes of war celebrating the military deeds of the Farnese - paintings preserved in the museum of the same name in Piacenza - but precisely with greater amplification and figurative fluency that gives an evocative dynamism to representation, pursued with constructive light touches and delicate chromatic and chiaroscuro passages.

This is one of the most significant new acquisitions in the Spolverini catalog, after my publication of the book I Pittori di Battaglie. Italian and foreign masters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries (De Luca ed., Rome 1999, pp. 138-144 and 480-489). A work to be ascribed to his full maturity that Ilario still had to perform very rapidly within the seventeenth century in the footsteps of the Brescianino, probably his direct master, but whose ascendancy was conjugated by Spolverini with full originality, soon manifesting his distinct personality , thanks also to the particular inventive solicited by the Farnese family, of which he became official court painter, exiled from the vein of the "battle". Already in the last decade of the century he painted ...

[Giancarlo Sestieri]