An Italianate landscape with herdsmen driving cattle, sheep and goats to water, a town in the distance; and A mountainous Italianate landscape with a herdsman and cattle by a stream and lightning striking a rock in the distance

The first picture repeats, with minor variants, a composition by Carlo Antonio Tavella, known both through a painting in a private collection in Genoa and a drawing in the Palazzo Rosso, Genoa (M. Roethlisberger, Cavalier Pietro Tempesta and his time, Haarlem, 1970, pp. 124-5, nos. 384 and 390, illustrated; see also M. Bonzi, Il Tavella, Genova, 1961, pp. 29-30, fig. 1, as Summer). Born in Milan of Genoese parents, he trained with Grevenbroeck and then with Pieter Mulier, il Tempesta, becoming his principal follower and 'indeed an exquisite classicizing landscape painter' (Roethlisberger, op. cit., p. 123). His oeuvre is extensive, and mostly found in Ligurian and Lombard private collections.

We are grateful to Professor Marcel Roethlisberger for confirming the attribution on the basis of colour transparencies.