Carlo Antonio Tavella (Milan, 1668 – Genoa, 1738), Arcadian landscape with shepherds and flock

Carlo Antonio Tavella (Milan, 1668 – Genoa, 1738)

Arcadian landscape with shepherds and flock

Oil on canvas, 58 x 97 cm

With frame, 67 x 105 cm

The canvas in question is part of the vast artistic corpus of the painter Carlo Antonio Tavella (Milan, 1668 – Genoa, 1738), considered among the most prolific artists of the Baroque period, especially in Genoa, the city that saw him most active. Born in 1668 in Milan to a couple of Genoese merchants, Tavella began his very first training at the studio of Giuseppe Merati, where he remained for about three years, landing in 1681 in the well-known workshop of the landscape painter Jan van Grevenbroeck known as Solfarolo, where he remained until the age of twenty-one (1689) and where he had the opportunity to practice copying and drawing, especially with regard to landscapes and villages in flames, the master's specialty. In the same years the artist undertook a series of journeys between Lombardy, Bologna, Florence, Pisa and Livorno, which brought him to the knowledge of the works and pictorial languages ​​of Gaspard Dughet, Salvator Rosa and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, from whom he assimilated elaborate scenographic compositions and an excellent rendering of atmospheres and the relative changes of light. It was probably the constant contact with the Tuscan environment that allowed Tavella to be updated on Roman proposals, as evidenced by some drawings preserved in the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe of Palazzo Rosso in Genoa, given that in all probability the artist never stayed in the capital: the relationships with the landscape painters of Roman culture active at the court of Ferdinando de' Medici, including Crescenzo Onofri, Dughet's pupil and collaborator in Rome, and the direct vision of the cycle of frescoes with landscape subjects, created by Pandolfo Reschi in the loggia of the Villa della Petraia in Florence, represented a fundamental stage in the artist's continuous training.

After a very brief return to Milan, in 1690 he made the decisive move to Genoa (interspersed with brief trips to Milan, Bergamo and Brescia), where he immediately had the opportunity to engage with the production of the Dutch painter Pieter Mulier II, known as Cavalier Tempesta, of whom he was a favourite pupil, and to complete important commissions such as the decoration with frescoed landscapes of the Hall of Liberal Arts in the current Palazzo Rosso (inspired by the taste of those created by Mulier himself in the Palazzo di Nicolosio Lomellino in Genoa). In the Ligurian capital, Tavella began a vast production of landscape paintings for the local nobility and for Lombard, Piedmontese and foreign clients, introducing figures of saints, shepherds, farmers and washerwomen into his views borrowed from repertoire sheets provided by Paolo Gerolamo Piola and Alessandro Magnasco. Of notable artistic value are the various Landscapes with figures preserved in Palazzo Bianco, the Landscapes with saints today at the Accademia Linguistica di Belle Arti in Genoa or the canvases exhibited at Palazzo Durazzo Pallavicini in Genoa or at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo, which share with our canvas a thin and dynamic brushstroke, accompanied by a distinctive color palette, oriented towards pastel shades and modulated on the contrast between light and shadow. It was precisely his ability in atmospheric description that helped to infuse his landscapes, reminiscent of classical Roman landscapes and those typical of French painting, with a unique depth and vivacity, giving the space suggestive and refined effects. Tavella died in Genoa on December 2, 1738 and was buried in the church of S. Domenico. The biographer Carlo Giuseppe Ratti remembers his daughters Angiola and Teresa, who followed in their father's footsteps and became established painters, as well as the best student of his workshop, Niccolò Micone, who became known for the nickname "Lo Zoppo".