Antonio Calza (Verona, 1653-1725), Battle between Christians and Turks

Antonio Calza (Verona, 1653-1725)

Battle between Christians and Turks

Oil on canvas, 79 x 119 cm  

The use of bright, vibrant colors and the balanced compositional style that animates the entire work reveal a closeness to the style and taste of the painter Antonio Calza (Verona, 1653-1725), who here chooses to reconstruct an intense clash between Christians and Turks. A knight emerges from the dense melee of combatants taking place in a mountainous setting, where the rocks are shrouded in a cloud of dust. He continues along the slope to the right, reaching a jagged horizon and a broad sky, furrowed by clouds and wisps of smoke from artillery fire, blurring the outline of the mountains and the fortress in the background. This device imbues the scene with a suggestive spatial depth, thanks to the bold figurative counterpoints coordinated by a progressive digression in perspective and expository meter.

Calza (Verona 1653 – 1729) was among the most accomplished and accomplished specialists of his time in war themes, emerging in the Emilian and Venetian regions during the final two decades of the 17th century and the first three decades of the 18th century. After an initial training in Bologna, he left his father's home at the age of fifteen, and an initial period of production in Emilia. He then likely moved to Rome to admire the works of Borgognone, the undisputed master of the field (two of his early works in the Castelvecchio Museum in Verona are very similar to Courtois). Antonio subsequently worked in various Italian cities, from Milan to Florence and especially in Venice, where he married his third wife and opened a workshop, as well as in Vienna, where from 1712 to 1716 he served Prince Eugene of Savoy. Naturally, many of his paintings, as reported by B. Dal Pozzo (Vite de' Pittori, degli Scultori et Architetti Veronesi, Verona 1716), were made for collectors in his hometown, where he returned in 1675 after making peace with his father, in whose circle he established himself as the greatest, starting a prolific following. The revival of Calza's role as a battle painter has been fairly recent, having been completely overlooked by modern critics until reconsidered by L. Magagnato in 1978, on the occasion of the Verona exhibition (Catalogue Painting in Verona between the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, pp. 143-149). The painter's catalogue has undergone a notable expansion since the 1980s, and since then the Veronese master has regained a position of absolute prestige in this pictorial genre. Calza's personal style is based on a bright chromaticism made up of splashes of color, combined with a fluidity and immediacy of execution, marked by a marked expressive emphasis and a refined relevance to reality, supported by a specific military expertise.

The painting under examination can be compared with various comparable works in the rich repertoire illustrated in the treatise on Calza; see the examples of paintings that have appeared on the antiques market and those held in museums.

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