Description

Paolo Anesi has been reevaluated since the studies conducted by Busiri Vici, who captured the painter’s pictorial and vedutistic qualities, comparing him in his achievements to Andrea Locatelli. The canvas presented here is an excellent example of his production and testifies to the role played by the painter in the sphere of eighteenth-century Roman landscape painting. It is no coincidence that Anesi was one of the artists most appreciated by Grand Tour travelers, especially English ones, and his works found a place in the most important Capitoline collections. It should also be noted how brilliantly Anesi combines Vanvitellian and Lint’s optical clarity with Van Bloemen’s ideal landscape tradition, with resolutions that seem to anticipate neoclassicism. Returning to the canvas under consideration, it reveals a fine painterly quality and the characteristic of its being a real view of the Roman countryside. Peculiar to the artist is the softness of the drafting and refined glazes, which reproduce the atmospheric sensitivity of the rain-soaked air, evoking a delicate arcadian emotionality.