Landscape
(Bologna 1576 - Rome 1622)
The painting, made by Giovan Battista Viola in 1613, is one of the many examples of landscape painting with narrative references. The landscape is the main unique protagonist here, and is outlined in beautiful contrasting colours – dominated by blue. It also incorporates characters intent on admiring a citadel, hidden behind a high promontory, surrounded by river waters.
Object details
Inventory
Location
Date
Classification
Period
Medium
Dimensions
Frame
Salvator Rosa, 87 x 111 x 8 cm
Provenance
Rome, Scipione Borghese Collection, 1613 (Della Pergola 1955, p. 49, no. 79); Inventory 1693, room II, n. 49; Inventario Fidecommissario Borghese 1833, p. 24. Purchased by Italian state, 1902.
Exhibitions
- 1922 Firenze, Palazzo Pitti;
- 1962 Bologna, Biblioteca Comunale dell'Archiginnasio;
- 1985 Roma, Palazzo Venezia;
- 1992 Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni;
- 1996-1997 Roma, Musei Capitolini;
- 2001 Cento, Pinacoteca Civica.
Conservation and Diagnostic
- 1953 (intervento di pulitura documentato sul retro di una delle due foto conservata in Archivio Borghese).
Work not currently exhibited
Commentary
This painting is first mentioned in the 1693 inventory as a work by Giovan Battista Viola (‘a work by Viola of 4 spans with a landscape with small figures and several villages in the distance: no. 708, with a gilded frame’. The attribution is repeated in the Inventario Fidecommissario of 1833 and was accepted by Xavier Barbier de Montault (1870), Giovanni Piancastelli (1891) and Roberto Longhi (1928). Longhi, however, had reservations and pointed to the style of Giovan Francesco Grimaldi, while rejecting the name of Agostino Tassi, proposed by Adolfo Venturi in 1893.
As Paola della Pergola (1955) correctly surmised – although she tended toward an attribution to a follower of Grimaldi – the painting could be one of the two ‘landscapes’ commissioned to Viola in 1613 by Scipione Borghese, an opinion that has been well received by critics, who have definitively confirmed the attribution to the Bolognese artist. According to Clovis Whitfield (1996), this Landscape and the payment for it – which Della Pergola made known – are two pieces of information whose dates are certain in the biography of this painter, who arrived in Rome in 1601 in the company of Francesco Albani: our sources show that in 1610 they were working together on decorating Palazzo Giustiniani di Bassano in Sutri. In addition, Whitfield maintained that this painting was strongly influenced by the works of Domenichino, with whom Viola collaborated on several occasions; in this case, though, Domenichino did not have a hand in the composition, which is therefore to be considered a work by Viola only.
This painting fully reveals the artist’s mature skills, which are expressed here with a freshness and a certain elegance as well as attention to proportions between people and landscapes and to the rules of perspective. The cold colours and layered composition, achieved by means of parallel bands, are in fact in line with his typical landscapes with small figures, such as the Landscape with Dice Players at Fontainebleau (Spear 1980, fig. 18), without, however, ‘that great passion for study and the stubborn clarity’ of Domenichino, according to critics. Viola’s disinclination for study is also attested to by the words of Giovanni Baglione (1642, p. 173): in his ‘cameo’ biography of the painter, he wrote of Viola’s experience in the role of keeper of Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi’s wardrobe, stating that ‘he took ill because of excessive fatigue, not being used to that work, which demanded great effort’. According to the biographer, the artist in fact died from the exertion that the position entailed.
Antonio Iommelli
Bibliography
- G. Baglione, Vite de’ pittori scultori e architetti. Dal Pontefìcato di Gregario XIII del l572 in fino a’ tempi di Papa Urbano VIII nel 1642, Roma 1642, p. 173;
- X. Barbier de Montault, Les Musées et Galeries de Rome, Rome 1870, p. 357;
- G. Piancastelli, Catalogo dei quadri della Galleria Borghese in Archivio Galleria Borghese, 1891, p. 195;
- A. Venturi, Il Museo e la Galleria Borghese, Roma 1893, p. 41;
- R. Longhi, Precisioni nelle Gallerie Italiane, I, La R. Galleria Borghese, Roma 1928, p. 178;
- P. Della Pergola, La Galleria Borghese. I Dipinti, I, Roma 1955, p. 49, n. 79;
- A. Emiliani, in L’ideale classico del ’600 in Italia e la pittura di paesaggio, V Mostra Biennale d’Arte Antica (Bologna 1962), a cura di C. Volpe, Bologna 1962, p. 301, n. 122;
- L. Salerno, Pittori di Paesaggio del Seicento a Roma, Roma 1976, p. 98;
- R.E. Spear, A forgotten landscape painter: Giovanni Battista Viola, in “The Burlington magazine”, CXXII, 1980, pp. 298-315, pp. 298-315;
- C. Whitfield, Les paysages du Dominiquin et de Viola, in "Fondation Eugène Piot - Monuments et Mémoires", LXIX, 1988, pp. 102-104, fig. 35;
- K. Herrmann Fiore, in Invisibilia. Rivedere i capolavori. Vedere i progetti, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Palazzo delle Esposizioni, 1992), a cura di M. E. Tittoni, S. Guarino, Roma 1992, pp. 30-33;
- C. Whitfield, in Classicismo e natura: la lezione di Domenichino, catalogo della mostra (Roma, Musei Capitolini, 1996-1997), a cura di S. Guarino e P. Masini, Milano 1996, pp. 127-128, n. 16;
- P. Moreno, C. Stefani, Galleria Borghese, Milano 2000, p. 309;
- E. Sambo, in Guercino. Racconti di paese, catalogo della mostra (Cento, Pinacoteca Civica, 2001), a cura di M. Pulini, Milano 2001, pp. 164-165;
- K. Herrmann Fiore, Galleria Borghese Roma scopre un tesoro. Dalla pinacoteca ai depositi un museo che non ha più segreti, San Giuliano Milanese 2006, p. 14.
