Giovanni Ghisolfi (Milan, 1623 – 1683), Landscape with architectural ruins and figures

Giovanni Ghisolfi (Milan, 1623 – 1683)

Landscape with architectural ruins and figures

Oil on canvas, 41 x 31 cm

With frame, 50 x 39 cm

A landscape of classical ruins animates Giovanni Ghisolfi's canvas with the tension between the grandeur of the past and the fragility of the present that characterizes the Milanese painter's entire output. The composition is organized around a core of imposing Ionic columns, still partially joined by a broken entablature that stands out against a luminous sky. The columns, painted in brown and earthy tones, dominate the upper half of the canvas with a dramatic presence, evoking the space of an ancient temple of which only the skeleton survives. At the base of these structures, steps and collapsed stone blocks form a sort of irregular stage on which human figures move, diminutive compared to the monumentality of the surrounding architecture. In the middle register, three figures appear intent on conversation, seated or leaning on the remains of the building. Below, two figures move among the stones, while schematic vegetation emerges here and there between the boulders. The light, diffused but directional, shapes the surfaces with precise touches and clear contrasts between the shaded areas and the illuminated planes, giving volumetric solidity to the architecture.

Giovanni Ghisolfi was born in Milan in 1623 and grew up in a family already oriented towards the arts. While still young, he entered the workshop of his uncle Antonio Volpino, where he learned the fundamentals of painting. In 1650, at the age of twenty-seven, he left for Rome with his friend, the painter Antonio Busca, intending to study ancient architecture and the drawing of architectural fragments. In the papal city, Ghisolfi worked closely with Salvator Rosa: initially, according to sources, Rosa handled the figures while Ghisolfi handled the architectural perspectives, although modern critics tend to downplay this relationship of dependence, recognizing the Milanese artist's complete autonomy from the outset. It was in Rome that Ghisolfi developed his crucial training in iconography focused on ancient Roman ruins, which enabled him to become the most renowned specialist, so much so that he is considered the forerunner of the architectural capriccio, which only achieved extraordinary illustrative success in the 18th century, establishing it as an independent pictorial genre. In 1661, returning to Lombardy, he decorated a chapel in the Certosa di Pavia; in 1664, he was called to Vicenza to fresco the Trissino Baston and Giustiniani Baggio palaces. He also worked at the Palazzo Arese Borromeo in Cesano Maderno and the Villa Reati in Lissone, as well as at the Sacro Monte in Varese, commissioned by Cardinal Luigi Alessandro Omodei.

The painting examined here fits squarely into the tradition of Ghisolfi's architectural capriccio and finds precise parallels in a series of works that confirm its stylistic and inventive coherence. The choice of towering Ionic columns that dominate the scene and the warm, earthy color palette, modulated through browns, ochres, and grays illuminated by the blue sky, bring this painting significantly closer to the Architectural Capriccio with Preparations for a Sacrifice, held by the National Trust in London, which features the same vertical architecture and the same use of light that sculpts the stone surfaces. Equally pertinent is the comparison with the painting Fantastic Arch with Venus Bathing, now in a private collection, where the palette of warm browns and blues is equally effective in the atmospheric rendering of the background. Typical of Ghisolfi's style is the way he constructs perspective sequences, treating the background with light, pale colors while the architectural sections are delineated with precise brushstrokes, strong contrasts, and touches of black in the sculptural details: a method perfectly evident in the present canvas. The architectural rendering finds further points of contact with the Architectural Capriccio with Figures from the Piraneseum Collection in San Lorenzo. Even more fitting is the comparison with the painting Pythagoras Re-Emerged from Hades from the Almagià Collection in Rome and the Architectural Capriccio with Sculpture of Marcus Aurelius from the public collections in Innsbruck, in which the same composition of crumbling architectural masses, animated by small figures, emerges. From these paintings emerges a sense of classicism conveyed through linear compositions in dark colors and a solid architectural layout that make Ghisolfi a forerunner of eighteenth-century vedutism, prefiguring what Giovanni Paolo Pannini would later bring to maturity in the following century.

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