Workshop of Francesco Monti, known as Brescianino (Brescia, 1646 – Piacenza, 1703), Pair of battle scenes

Workshop of Francesco Monti, known as Brescianino (Brescia, 1646 – Piacenza, 1703)

Pair of battle scenes

(2) Oil on canvas, 59,5 x 74,5 cm

With frame, 75 x 88

The pair of canvases in question depicts a clash between knights with firearms. The brilliant armour of the combatants stands out against a sky full of clouds, in front of the profile of a city and a suggestive natural landscape. The scene is depicted in the foreground, according to a typical trick of the battles painted in Northern Italy in the second half of the seventeenth century, and, in particular by Francesco Monti and the members of his school, so as to make the viewer feel like a direct witness of the scene he is witnessing. This turns out to be one of the key characteristics of Brescianino's production, to which are added a great chromatic vivacity, the play of various perspectives and a careful stage direction. A peculiarity of the painter and the members of his circle is the representation of the fight in the foreground, described with chromatic vivacity and a careful stage direction. The episode of the white horse half fallen to the ground with the rider unseated, as well as the clash of two characters in the centre, are elements that recur in Brescianino's repertoire, as can be seen in works such as the Battle Scene of the Pinacoteca Stuard or the Battle of Palazzo Rivella.

Francesco Monti, better known as Il Brescianino or Il Brescianino delle battaglia, was born in Brescia in 1646. Pellegrino Antonio Orlandi (1704), who was his first biographer, reports that his teacher was the Lucca painter Pietro Ricchi. All subsequent literature has welcomed the news, mostly hypothesizing that the apprenticeship took place during Ricchi's stay in Venice, placed in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. The total absence of data on Monti's youthful activity, however, makes it almost impossible to evaluate the influence of Ricchi's style on his training and, on the other hand, it is not easy to identify derivations from the master in his subsequent production. Monti was also a pupil of Jacques Courtois, known as Borgognone, according to Orlandi himself and a letter sent to Monti by his friend Carlo Giuseppe Fontana in 1694, reported in the monograph dedicated to the artist of Brescian origins by Arisi (1975, p. 34). Borgognone's teaching, although the chronological and geographical circumstances are unknown, must have had a decisive role in Monti's improvement as a battle painter. The difficulties of outlining a certain catalogue of his work, however, in the absence of a sufficient quantity of documented paintings, are also reflected in the definition of this artistic relationship: symbolic of Borgognone's influence on Brescianino is the diptych of Battles from the Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo, attributed for the first time to the artist originally from Brescia in 1981 by Romagnolo. During his formative phase, the artist took numerous trips that took him to various locations on the Peninsula: particularly significant was the one to Naples, where he had the opportunity to observe first-hand the work of Salvator Rosa, which strongly influenced his entire pictorial production. Fundamental works for defining and understanding the stylistic characteristics underlying Brescianino's production are the six paintings in the Rocca dei principi Lupo di Sorgara, the Battle in the Sanvitale Museum in Fontanellato and the Fight between Knights in the Farnese Palace in Piacenza. Having reached full artistic maturity, Brescianino entered the permanent service of the Farnese family in 1681: numerous are the works, mainly of war subjects, created by the artist for the centres of Parma and Piacenza in the last twenty years of the seventeenth century. Particularly appreciated at the Farnese court, the artist was able to build a prolific workshop in Parma, where figures such as Giovanni Canti, Ilario Spolverini, Angiolo Everardi, known as the Fiamminghino, and Lorenzo Comendich trained. Monti's paintings are characterised by large spaces "that get lost in the smoke and dust", by the tangle of armed men in the foreground with unseated knights and horses rearing in the last moment of life. In addition to the battles, which certainly constitute the most substantial and interesting segment of his production, the painter executed paintings with religious themes and marine scenes in which the influence of Pieter Mulier, known as The Tempest, with whom he had a deep friendship, can be seen. After having created an active and successful workshop, the artist died, probably in Piacenza, in 1703 (Sestieri, 1999, p.

The analogies with Brescianino's style lead to the attribution of the pair of paintings to a direct member of his school, among which we recall Giuseppe Nicola Domenico Monti, "who followed his father's footsteps" (Orlandi, 1661) and Giovanni Canti, who was probably the author of Joshua stopping the sun, previously attributed to his master (Arisi 1975, n. 26).