Animated landscapes

Venetian School, Animated Landscapes, 18th century, oil on canvas, 49 x 39 cm (for the four rectangles), 48 x 37.5 cm (for the eleven ovals)

Sala dei quadri

Palazzo Vendramin Grimani, 2022

Fifteen paintings make up an ensemble that is all the more remarkable in that most of these groups of figure-filled landscapes, which were once quite common in the palaces of the Serenissima or the villas of Veneto, have been dismembered. The author of these imaginary landscapes, inhabited by figures whose sketched character gives them an almost dancing appearance (close to the style of an Alessandro Magnasco, without, however, the feverish agitation of his works), has not yet been identified, but one name can be put forward albeit without greater specificity: the “master of the Correr landscapes”; so called because of the four paintings by his hand that are conserved in the Museo Correr. This follower of Marco Ricci (1676-1730) was typical of the Italian tradition of vedute, with a sometimes almost pre-Romantic sensibility in the clarity of the palette, the treatment of light and the ability to record atmospheric variations. Recent research suggests that the mysterious master was in fact the head of a workshop specialising in the production of these vedute or decorative capriccios, which are typically Venetian in their charm and imagination.