Oil painting on canvas

Mesures: 76 x 101 cm.

framed 95 x 118 cm.

Provenance: Lempertz Cologne, 15.05.2002, Old Master Paintings, Drawings & Sculptures (Estimate € 35,000) - see photo details

This significant Arcadian landscape, wide-ranging and classic made up of an aristocratic picture gallery, clearly refers to the hand of one of the greatest landscape painters active in Rome between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century, Jan Frans Van Bloemen known as L ' Horizon. It is a real but idealized view of the Roman countryside, interpreted with pastoral sensitivity where the gaze is lost in the distant horizon.

The work reflects an emblematic example of Bloemen's landscape art, where it is possible to trace the salient points of his painting, such as the resplendent horizons with the changing plays of light and shadow, the hills kissed by an almost fairytale-like pastel brightness, the green intense vegetation and the typical touches of light cadenced between the branches of the trees, as well as the plateaus and hills in the background, imbued with light.

The artist was a skilled master in describing the Roman countryside with a purely idyllic sensitivity, permeated by suggestions oscillating between mythology and reality, and with an atmosphere that recalls the myth of Arcadia.

The structure of the composition, dotted with the numerous villages arranged in the different perspective levels, recalls the Lazio districts between Orvieto and Orte, recalling the Tivoli area, one of the favorite locations during the Grand Tour, crossed by the Aniene river, on whose banks we see some figures of fishermen.

Of Flemish origins, Van Bloemen learned the art of drawing in his homeland, initially studying with Anton Goubau. After a documented stay in Paris between 1682 and 1684, he moved to Italy with his brother Pieter (also a painter, known by the nickname of "Standard"), passing from Turin to Rome, the city where he resided permanently. except for a short trip to southern Italy.

After a debut entirely oriented towards the execution of markedly Dughettian landscapes, in Rome at the end of the seventeenth century he acquired an extraordinary reputation as a landscape painter, earning the nickname of "Horizon". Its bright, bright colors, sometimes tending to pastel tones, gradually ousted the hegemony of brown tones and dark backgrounds typical of its famous predecessor Dughet.

There are also the stylistic suggestions that he had borrowed from fellow painters such as Claude Lorrain and Jacob de Heusch, without forgetting Andrea Locatelli, his bitter rival in claiming the role of the greatest exponent of that genre in the city.

The painting is in excellent condition, perfectly restored, accompanied by a beautiful golden frame.

The work, like all our objects, is sold with a certificate of photographic authenticity in accordance with the law.

For more information, please contact us.

Follow us also on: