Francesco Foschi (Ancona, 1710 – Rome, 1780), Fantastic winter view with ruins

Francesco Foschi (Ancona, 1710 – Rome, 1780)

Fantastic winter view with ruins

Oil on canvas, 98 x 140 cm

With frame, 111 x 154 cm

Francesco Foschi from Ancona was the greatest interpreter in Italy of the distinctly Nordic genre of the winter landscape.

Known as Chevalier Foschi was born in Ancona in 1710. After a short period of apprenticeship in Fano in Francesco Mancini's workshop he moved to Rome in 1729 with his family, where he probably remained until the 40s. In 1744 he married Costanza Scirman in the eternal city. There is no biographical information for the years 1745-1763, although it can be assumed that the painter returned to the Marche. This hypothesis is supported by the existence of a large canvas depicting a Panorama of Loreto, with the figures of Abundance and Justice and the portraits of Leo , according to Zampetti, commissioned by Benedetto In particular, he collaborated assiduously with Count Raimondo Bonaccorsi, his protector, assisting him in the creation of a valuable art collection, which also included the famous series of Ovidian paintings. However, the fame he enjoyed among his contemporaries is mainly linked to his winter landscapes, the first known example of which, signed and dated 1727, is preserved at the Musée des Beaux-Arts in Grenoble.

From 1755 he moved to Pesaro and then returned definitively to Rome around 1764, living on the third floor of a house in Piazza di Spagna, until his death at the beginning of 1780.

His exceptional skill in painting snowy landscapes was so renowned that his obituary, published on March 11 in the “Ordinario del Chracas” (or “Diary of Rome”), celebrated him as “the famous painter of winter landscapes”.

In these works, which gave him well-deserved fame, he talks about a harsh and rigid, but not inhospitable, nature. A freezing environment in which man carries out his activities almost undisturbed by the severity of the climate that surrounds him.

Its snowy scenarios dotted with bare trees, small mountain landscapes with sloping roofs of a Nordic flavour, frozen lakes and wayfarers are imbued with an intense lyricism and a melancholy vision of nature that can well be defined as pre-romantic. Some of his works are preserved in important Italian and European museums: for example a "Winter landscape with hikers" is found at the Thyssen-Bornemisza Museum, Madrid or the Civic Art Gallery of Ancona. The refined painting examined sees the careful observation and sophisticated restitution of the atmospheric data, rendered with various silvery-grey variations, balanced by the greens and browns of the vegetation. On the left bank of the river a figure heads towards a cave where some characters are warming themselves in the warmth of a fire. At the top right, perched on a small cliff, there are some houses while in the distance some high, rocky mountains are described. The particular uniqueness of the present painting is the imaginative addition of two strange monuments: the ruins of an ancient amphitheater (with not too hidden reminiscences of the Colosseum) and behind the trees what seems to be an allusion to the Cestius pyramid.