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Lot Essay
We are grateful to Dr. Daniele de Sarno Prignano for confirming the attribution on the basis of photographs. He dates the painting to circa 1710-15.
Alessandro was the son of the successful Genoese painter Stefano Magnasco. Orphaned at a young age, he was sent to Milan to train with the artist Filippo Abbiati. Although Genoese by birth this early training in Milan meant that Alessandro's style developed in a different direction to that of his contemporaries in Genoa, and owed more to the dramatic Lombard tradition, notably the work of Francesco Cairo and Giovanni Battista Crespi, il Cerano. He developed a highly idiosyncratic style, characterized by nervous brushstrokes and a pronounced chairoscuro. Towards the end of the century he was painting his first genre scenes, as well as executing figures in the landscapes of Antonio Francesco Peruzzini, Clemente Spera and other paesaggisti. Between 1703 and 1709 he was active with Peruzzini at the court of Ferdinando dei Medici in Tuscany. The court was one of the most intellectually advanced in the peninsula and this proved to be a significant period in Alessandro's development. In the Prince's collection Magnasco was able to study prima manu a vast group of Dutch and Flemish genre paintings, had access to prints by such artists as Heemskerck and Callot and was free to develop a wide variety of subject matter for which he is still celebrated today.
After returning to Milan around 1709, he continued collaborating with Spera and Peruzzini, and supplying paintings to the Lombard aristocracy. Milan was now under Austrian domination and was experiencing strong economic and cultural growth. Milanese families such as the Archinto, the Borromeo and the Visconti, among others, were at the vanguard of the Italian Enlightenment. Magnasco's links with such circles and his interest in these social and literary debates can be seen in his paintings which alternate between subtle irony and critical satire, such as the Satire on a nobleman in misery in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
The present painting is representative of this second Milanese period of Magnasco's career, and it shows strong similarities with the series executed in the early 1710s for the Lechi family (Muti and de Sarno Prignano, op. cit., pp. 205-6, nos. 34-7, figs. 37, 216-9) or the Soldiers with a quack-woman formerly in the A.S. Drey collection in Munich (ibid., p. 241, no. 240, fig. 185) and perhaps most obviously with The Concert in Warsaw, Muzeum Nerodowe (ibid., pp. 257-8, no. 334, fig. 181).
Alessandro was the son of the successful Genoese painter Stefano Magnasco. Orphaned at a young age, he was sent to Milan to train with the artist Filippo Abbiati. Although Genoese by birth this early training in Milan meant that Alessandro's style developed in a different direction to that of his contemporaries in Genoa, and owed more to the dramatic Lombard tradition, notably the work of Francesco Cairo and Giovanni Battista Crespi, il Cerano. He developed a highly idiosyncratic style, characterized by nervous brushstrokes and a pronounced chairoscuro. Towards the end of the century he was painting his first genre scenes, as well as executing figures in the landscapes of Antonio Francesco Peruzzini, Clemente Spera and other paesaggisti. Between 1703 and 1709 he was active with Peruzzini at the court of Ferdinando dei Medici in Tuscany. The court was one of the most intellectually advanced in the peninsula and this proved to be a significant period in Alessandro's development. In the Prince's collection Magnasco was able to study prima manu a vast group of Dutch and Flemish genre paintings, had access to prints by such artists as Heemskerck and Callot and was free to develop a wide variety of subject matter for which he is still celebrated today.
After returning to Milan around 1709, he continued collaborating with Spera and Peruzzini, and supplying paintings to the Lombard aristocracy. Milan was now under Austrian domination and was experiencing strong economic and cultural growth. Milanese families such as the Archinto, the Borromeo and the Visconti, among others, were at the vanguard of the Italian Enlightenment. Magnasco's links with such circles and his interest in these social and literary debates can be seen in his paintings which alternate between subtle irony and critical satire, such as the Satire on a nobleman in misery in the Detroit Institute of Arts.
The present painting is representative of this second Milanese period of Magnasco's career, and it shows strong similarities with the series executed in the early 1710s for the Lechi family (Muti and de Sarno Prignano, op. cit., pp. 205-6, nos. 34-7, figs. 37, 216-9) or the Soldiers with a quack-woman formerly in the A.S. Drey collection in Munich (ibid., p. 241, no. 240, fig. 185) and perhaps most obviously with The Concert in Warsaw, Muzeum Nerodowe (ibid., pp. 257-8, no. 334, fig. 181).