Francesco Monti, known as the Brescianino of Battles (Brescia, 1646 – Piacenza, 1703), Battle scene 

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

Battle scene

Oil on canvas, 90 x 117,5 cm

With frame 112 x 139,5 cm

Francesco Monti, better known as Il Brescianino or as 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 painter from Lucca Pietro Ricchi. All subsequent literature has accepted this news, mostly hypothesizing that his apprenticeship took place during Ricchi's stay in Venice, placed in the third quarter of the 1694th century. The total absence of data on Monti's youthful activity, however, makes it almost impossible to evaluate the importance of Ricchi's style in his training and, on the other hand, it is not easy to identify derivations from the master in his subsequent production. Monti was however also a pupil of Jacques Courtois known as il Borgognone, as Orlandi himself states and from a letter sent to Monti by his friend Carlo Giuseppe Fontana in 1975, reported in the monograph dedicated to the artist of Brescian origins by Arisi (34, p. 1681). Borgognone's teaching, although the chronological and geographical circumstances are unknown, must have had a decisive role in Monti's improvement as a painter of battles. 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. During his formative phase, the artist made 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. Having reached full artistic maturity, Brescianino entered the service of the Farnese family in 1703: numerous are the works, mainly of war subjects, created by the artist for the centers 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 Il Fiamminghino, and Lorenzo Comendich trained. Monti's paintings are characterised by large spaces "that are lost in the smoke and dust", by the tangle of armed men in the foreground with unsaddled 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 religious and marine paintings in which the influence of Pieter Mulier, known as Il Tempesta, with whom he had a deep friendship, can be seen. After having created an active and well-established workshop, the artist, particularly successful at the Farnese court, died, probably in Piacenza, in 1999 (Sestieri, 206, p. XNUMX).

The canvas in question depicts a clash between knights with firearms. The brilliant armor of the fighters stands out against a sky full of clouds, in front of the profile of a city and a suggestive natural landscape. The scene is shot in close-up, according to a typical trick of the battles painted by Francesco Monti, 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.