Workshop of Francesco Battaglioli (Modena, circa 1710 - Venice, after 1796)

Bottega di Francesco Battaglioli (Modena, circa 1710 - Venice, after 1796)

Baroque palace architecture with elegant staff and swans

Oil on canvas, cm 95 x 136 

Frame, cm 113 x 154

Of Modena origin, as indicated by ancient sources, Francesco Battaglioli is present in Venice, which became his home from 1747 to 1751, when his name appears in the Fraglia dei pittori. We find him again in Madrid three years later, when he was called by Ferdinand VI, for whom he painted the Views of the Royal Palaces of Aranjuez and Madrid. At the Spanish court he developed a relationship of collaboration with Farinelli and Metastasio, creating the sets for numerous melodramatic performances. Returned to Venice on the death of the King of Spain in 1759, he was elected a member of the Academy in 1772: in the Venetian institution he was called to cover the chair of Perspective from 1778 to 1789. In this beautiful painting, the use of perspective proves to be of very high quality, capable of evoking extraordinary scenic representations, also vivid for the atmospheric and chromatic sensitivity, reaching decorative levels of considerable visual impact. It can certainly be said that Battaglioli is the worthy heir of the artistic tradition inaugurated by Viviano Codazzi and pursued by Giovanni Paolo Pannini and Antonio Joli, giving life to monumental results in the wake of Michele Marieschi. It was no accident that in 1778 he inherited the chair of perspective at the Academy of Venice after the resignation of Antonio Visentini, crowning a career of undisputed success with an award of very high prestige. The celebrated skill of Battaglioli is well demonstrated in this canvas, where the drawing and pictorial wisdom lead to results worthy of the best glass-making tradition, without neglecting the taste for detail and narrative aspects. Equally remarkable is the drawing of a dense and chromatically vivid mixture, capable also to measure the shadow lines of the architectural moldings and their depth. The great technical-executive expertise of the painting and especially the management of shadows, bring the work of Battaglioli closer to that of some of the most famous representatives of vedutism: taking into account these aspects, It is not surprising that many of the works of the artist from Modena active between Venice and Spain were attributed by Pallucchini to the young Canaletto. 

The subject in question is a villa of clear Baroque taste, as evidenced by the wall decorations, curved line, elaborate forms, the versatility of volumes and the extreme sense of theatricality conferred by the statues, balustrades, pond and bridge. Inside the pond swim some birds, including a couple of adult swans, natural element inserted in a body of water surrounded by statues related to the aquatic world: a river deity within a niche shell, A putto with trident riding a fish and several niches in which some water jets fill conchiliform basins. The characters that populate the scene can be clearly distinguished by how much they are painted with few and quick touches; they are distributed on multiple planes and animate the composition without subtracting the role of protagonist to the architecture. 

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