Lot Essay
We are grateful to Dr. David R. Marshall for confirming the attribution on the basis of a transparency. Dr. Marshall dates the present picture to the 1660s and suggests that the figures and the dog may be by the same hand as those in a capriccio of a similar size formerly in the Ortolani Collection, Rome (D.R. Marshall, Viviano and Niccolò Codazzi and the Baroque Architectural Fantasy, Milan and Rome, 1993, p. 332, no. VC 196, illustrated); the pendant to that picture (ibid., p. 331, no. VC 195, illustrated) is dated 1668.