Alessandro Magnasco

Alessandro Magnasco
Self-portrait
Born	(1667-02-04)February 4, 1667 Genoa, Republic of Genoa
Died	March 12, 1749(1749-03-12) (aged 82) Genoa, Republic of Genoa
Nationality	Italian
Education	Valerio Castello, Filippo Abbiati
Known for	Painting
Movement	Baroque

Alessandro Magnasco (February 4, 1667 – March 12, 1749), also known as il Lissandrino, was an Italian late-Baroque painter active mostly in Milan and Genoa. He is best known for stylized, fantastic, often phantasmagoric genre or landscape scenes. Magnasco's distinctive style is characterized by fragmented forms rendered with swift brushstrokes and darting flashes of light.

Life

Born in Genoa to a minor artist, Stefano Magnasco, he apprenticed with Valerio Castello, and finally with Filippo Abbiati (1640–1715) in Milan. Except for 1703–09 (or 1709–11) when working in Florence for the Grand Duke Cosimo III, Magnasco labored in Milan until 1735, when he returned to his native Genoa. Magnasco often collaborated with placing figures in the landscapes of Tavella and the ruins of Clemente Spera in Milan.

Mature style

Joseph Interpreting Dreams

After 1710, Magnasco excelled in producing small, hypochromatic canvases with eerie and gloomy landscapes and ruins, or crowded interiors peopled with small, often lambent and cartoonishly elongated characters. The people in his paintings were often nearly liquefacted beggars dressed in tatters, rendered in flickering, nervous brushstrokes. Often they deal with unusual subjects such as synagogue services, Quaker meetings, robbers' gatherings, catastrophes, and interrogations by the Inquisition. His sentiments regarding these subjects are generally unclear.

A century later he would be described as a "romantic painter: who painted with candid touches, and ingenious expressiveness, little figures in Gothic churches; or in solitude, hermits and monks; or scoundrels assembled in town squares; soldiers in barracks". The art historian and critic Luigi Lanzi described him as the Cerquozzi of his school; thereby signaling him into the circle of followers of the Bamboccianti. He indicates that Magnasco had "figures scarcely more than a span large ... painted with humor and delight", but not as if this effect had been the intention of the painter. Lanzi says these eccentric pieces were favored by the Grand Duke Giovanni Gastone Medici of Florence. Magnasco also found contemporary patronage for his work among prominent families and collectors of Milan, for example the Arese and Casnedi families. This series of patrons underscores the fact that Magnasco was more esteemed by outsiders than by his fellow Genoese; as Lanzi noted, "his bold touch, though joined to a noble conception and to correct drawing, did not attract in Genoa, because it is far removed from the finish and union of tints which (Genoese) masters followed." In the twentieth century, Rudolf Wittkower derided him as "solitary, tense, strange, mystic, ecstatic, grotesque, and out of touch with the triumphal course of the Venetian school" from 1710 onward.

Origins of his style

Hermit in the Desert

The influences on his work are obscure. Some suspect the influence of the loose painterly style of his Venetian contemporary Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734), the Genoese Domenico Piola (1627–1703) and Gregorio de Ferrari, although the most prominent of the three, Ricci, painted in a more monumental and mythic style, and these artists may in fact have been influenced by Magnasco. Magnasco was likely influenced by Milanese il Morazzone (1573–1626) in the emotional quality of his work. Some of his canvases (see ill. (q.)) recall Salvator Rosa's romantic sea-lashed landscapes, and his affinity for paintings of brigands. The diminutive scale of Magnasco's figures relative to the landscape is comparable to Claude Lorraine's more airy depictions. While his use of figures of ragged beggars has been compared with Giuseppe Maria Crespi's genre style, Crespi's figures are larger, more distinct, and individual, and it is possible that Crespi himself may have influenced Magnasco. Others point to the influences of late Baroque Italian genre painters, the Roman Bamboccianti, and in his exotic scenography, the well-disseminated engravings of the Frenchman Callot.

Legacy

Magnasco's work may have influenced Marco Ricci, Giuseppe Bazzani, Francesco Maffei, and the famed painters de tocco (by touch) Gianantonio and Francesco Guardi in Venice.

His depictions of torture in The Inquisition (or perhaps named Interrogations in a Jail) are an atypical subject for Italian baroque paintings, as were his depictions of the religious ceremonies of Jews and Quakers. Yet it remains unsolved, according to Wittkower, "how much quietism or criticism or farce went into the making of his pictures".

Selected works

• 
  The Tame Magpie (1707–08) Metropolitan Museum of Art
• 
  Interrogations in Jail (c. 1710) Kunsthistorisches Museum
• 
  Banditti at Rest (with Clemente Spera) (c. 1710) Hermitage Museum
• 
  Garden Party in Albaro Strada Nuova Museums Genoa
• 
  Gypsy Wedding Banquet (1730–35) Louvre
• 
  Dissipation and Ignorance destroy the Arts and Sciences (1735–1740) private collection
• 
  Nuns Musée des Beaux-Arts de Strasbourg
• 
  Jewish Funeral, oil on canvas, 87 x 117 cm, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme
• 
  Christ at the Sea of Galilee (c. 1740) National Gallery of Art Washington DC
• 
  The Exorcism of the Waves (c. 1735), Memorial Art Gallery Rochester NY
• 
  Christ attended by the Angels. C. 1705. Prado Museum. Madrid. Magnasco and Peruzzini.
• 
  The painter's workshop. c. 1720. Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. Madrid.

Painting	Dates	Site	Link
Gathering of Quakers	1695	Uffizi, Florence
Theodosius Repulsed from Church by St. Ambrose	1700-10	Art Institute of Chicago
Christ attended by angels	c. 1705	Museo del Prado, Madrid	[1]
Christ and Samaritan Woman	1705-10	Getty Museum, Los Angeles	[2]
Noli Me Tangere	1705-10	ibid	[3]
The Hunting Scene	1710	Wadsworth Atheneum
Muletrain and Castle	1710	Louvre	[4]
Bacchanalian Scene	1710s	Hermitage Museum	[5]
Halt of the Brigands	1710s	ibid	[6]
Landscape with Washerwomen	1710-20	University of Michigan Museum of Art	[7]
The Inquisition or Interrogations in a Jail	1710-20	Kunsthistorisches Museum	[8]
The Temptation of Saint Anthony	1710-20	Louvre	[9]
Landscape with Shepherds	c. 1710-30	São Paulo Museum of Art, São Paulo	[10]
Pulcinella singing with Family and Lute Player	1710-35	Columbia Museum of Art, South Carolina	[11]
Three Camaldolite Monks at Prayer	1713-14	Rijksmuseum	[12]
Three Capuchin Friars Meditating in their Hermitage	1713-14	ibid	[13]
Christ Adored by Two Nuns	c. 1715	Accademia	[14]
The Sack of a City	1719-25	Brukenthal National Museum, Abbey of Seitenstetten, Sibiu
Satire of Nobleman in Misery	1719-25	Detroit Institute of Arts	[15]
The painter's workshop	c. 1720	Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid	[16]
Bacchanale	1720-30	The Getty Center in Los Angeles	[17]
Triumph of Venus	1720-30	ibid	[18]
Interior with Monks	1725	Norton Simon Museum	[19]
Gamblers, Soldiers and Vagabonds	1720-30	Staatsgalerie Stuttgart	[20]
Supper of Pulcinella & Colombina	1725-30	North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh	[21]
The Synagogue	1725-30	Cleveland Museum of Art
Consecration of a Franciscan Friar	c. 1730	El Paso Museum of Art, Texas	[22]
Burial of a Franciscan Friar	c. 1730	El Paso Museum of Art	[23]
Monks chapter	1730-1740	Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid	[24]
Sacrilegious Robbery	1731	intended for church of Siziano, now in Quadreria Arcivescovile, Milan	[25]
Exorcism of the Waves	after 1735	Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York	[26]
Landscape with Travelers	1735-1740	New Orleans Museum of Art
The Observant Friars in the Refectory	1736-37	Museo Civico di Bassano del Grappa	[27]
Figures Before a Stormy Sea	ca. 1740	Honolulu Museum of Art
The Entrance to a Hospital		Muzeul des Arta, Bucharest
Landscape with Camaldolese friars		Museo Giannetino Luxora, Genoa	[28]
The Marriage Banquet		Louvre
Praying Monks		Museum voor Schone Kunsten, Ghent	[29]
Reception in a Garden		Palazzo Bianco, Genoa
Seashore		Hermitage Museum	[30]
Supper at Emmaus		Convent S. Francesco in Albaro, Genoa
The Tame Magpie		Metropolitan Museum	[31]
Two Hermits in Forest		Louvre	[32]
A Hermit in the Desert		Lázaro Galdiano Museum, Madrid	[33]
Untitled			[34]

References

• Raffaello Soprani, Carlo Giuseppe Ratti (a cura di), Vite de Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Genovesi; In questa seconda Edizione rivedute, accresciute ed arricchite di note da Carlo Giuseppe Ratti Tomo Primo, Stamperia Casamara, dalle Cinque Lampadi, con licenza de superiori, Genova, 1769. Pagine 155-164
• Herman Voss, A Re-discovered Picture by Alessandro Magnasco, in The Burlington Magazine, LXXI, pp. 171–177. London 1937
• A Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Alessandro Magnasco, exhibition catalogue, Durlacher Bros, New York
• Golden Gate International Exhibition, California Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, 1940
• Maria Pospisil, Magnasco. Firenze 1944
• Benno Geiger, Magnasco. Bergamo 1949
• Antonio Morassi, Mostra del Magnasco, exhibition catalogue, Bergamo 1949
• Renato Roli, Alessandro Magnasco, Milano 1964
• V.Magnoni, Alessandro Magnasco, Roma 1965
• Alessandro Magnasco, exhibition catalogue, Louisville-Ann Arbor, 1967
• Fausta Franchini Guelfi, Alessandro Magnasco. Genova 1977
• Spike, John T. (1986). Centro Di (ed.). Giuseppe Maria Crespi and the Emergence of Genre Painting in Italy. p. 87.
• Fausta Franchini Guelfi, Alessandro Magnasco. Soncino (Cr) 1991
• Wittkower, Rudolf (1993). Art and Architecture Italy, 1600-1750. Penguin Books, Pelican History of Art. p. 478.
• L.Muti - D. De Sarno Prignano, Magnasco. Faenza 1994
• Alessandro Magnasco 1667-1749. Exhibition catalogue. Milano 1996
• C. Geddo, Alessandro Magnasco: una fortuna critica senza confini, ibidem, pp. 39–50
• Jane Turner (a cura di), The Dictionary of Art. 20, pp. 95–96. New York, Grove, 1996. ISBN 1-884446-00-0

External links

Media related to Alessandro Magnasco at Wikimedia Commons