An Italianate landscape with figures resting by a stream near a ruined castle; and An Italianate landscape with herdsmen and their cattle and goats by a stream

Andrea Locatelli is considered one of the most important exponents of Roman landscape painting in the first half of the eighteenth century. He received his artistic training in the studio of his father, Giovanni Francesco, in Trastevere, Rome. In 1715, after having worked for three little-known painters - Monsu Alto, Bernadino Fergioni, and Biagio Puccini - Locatelli was commissioned to decorate a room in the Palazzo Ruspoli in Rome, the first of several important decorative schemes that he was to execute. Despite these instances of patronage, it was primarily as a painter of easel pictures that Locatelli made his name. These were sought after not only by distinguished Roman patrons but also by an international clientele, amongst whom he was renowned for his idyllic views of the Campagna.

Throughout the course of his artistic career, Locatelli experimented with a wide variety of genres. At first, like his teacher Alto, he concentrated on river and coastal landscapes, influenced by the style of Salvator Rosa, as well as landscapes with ancient ruins. Later, he turned more towards the works of Gaspar Dughet and Jan Frans van Bloemen, painting idyllic views of the Roman Campagna and mythological scenes set in Arcadian landscapes (for a fine example of the latter type, see lot 178).