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Lot Essay
This picture, formerly regarded as a work by Domenichino, has been reattributed to Pietro Paolo Bonzi. Initially trained by a local painter in Cortona, Bonzi - whose sobriquet derives from his hunchback (gobbo in Itialian) - left for Rome probably in the mid-1590s, and there, according to Malvasia, studied with Giovanni Battista Viola, a member of the Carracci circle who specialized in landscape painting.
Heavily influenced by the Carracci school, Bonzi's work has, until its recent revaluation, often been confused with that of artists such as Viola, Agostino Tassi and Domenichino. He painted trees and bushes in the middle distance to provide a layer of delicately textured tone and usually included tree stumps or dead trees as accents in the foreground, favouring olive green, ochre and brown with a little blue (e.g. Landscape with Shepherds and Sheep, Rome, Museo Capitolino, and Landscape with a Roadside Shrine, Rome, Galeria Doria-Pamphili). His small landscape paintings are appealingly evocative of the Roman countryside and reflect his appreciation of the work of Paul Bril, Adam Elsheimer, Annibale Carracci and Domenichino.
Heavily influenced by the Carracci school, Bonzi's work has, until its recent revaluation, often been confused with that of artists such as Viola, Agostino Tassi and Domenichino. He painted trees and bushes in the middle distance to provide a layer of delicately textured tone and usually included tree stumps or dead trees as accents in the foreground, favouring olive green, ochre and brown with a little blue (e.g. Landscape with Shepherds and Sheep, Rome, Museo Capitolino, and Landscape with a Roadside Shrine, Rome, Galeria Doria-Pamphili). His small landscape paintings are appealingly evocative of the Roman countryside and reflect his appreciation of the work of Paul Bril, Adam Elsheimer, Annibale Carracci and Domenichino.