(Steinach am Brenner 1725–1804 Milan)
A landscape with a waterway, ruins and figures,
signed and dated lower left: M. Knoller. p. 1782,
oil on canvas, 136 x 173 cm, framed

Provenance:
Galleria Ardea, Milan;
Plateo Collection, Milan, circa 1951;
Private European collection

Exhibited:
Como, Villa Comunale dell’Olmo, L’età neoclassica in Lombardia, July – October 1959;
vMilan, Palazzo Reale, Settecento lombardo, February – April 1991;

Literature:
A. Ottino della Chiesa, L’Età neoclassica in Lombardia, exhibition catalogue, Como 1959, p. 91, no. 196;
R. Bossaglia/V. Terraroli (eds.), Settecento Lombardo, exhibition catalogue, Milan 1991, p. 236, no. I. 225;
E. Baumgartl, Martin Knoller 1725–1804, Berlin 2004, p. 276, no. L3, ill. p. 114

The focus of the present composition of this ideal southern landscape is on nature, which the artist has rendered in a typically clear manner with a skilful handling of perspective. The treatment of light and the ruins on the left are already suggestive of early Romanticism. The foreground is divided up by a waterway, with the individual scenes framed by clusters of trees, rocks, and architectural structures on the sides. In the far distance are castles, towns, and solitary buildings under a cloudy evening sky. The figures are rural genre types who mingle with scholarly types who seem to be interested in the remains of antiquity, as they point at a relief inserted in a wall.

Knoller’s landscape paintings, harking back to the tradition of Claude Lorrain and Nicolas Poussin, are more distinctly based on classical principles than his frescoes, in which Baroque and Rococo elements prevail. Five landscapes are conserved in the Villa Reale in Monza (on loan from the Sopraintendenza per i Beni Architettonici e per il Paesaggio di Milano) and two landscapes featuring the Road to Emmaus and Christ Cleansing a Leper are in private collections (see E. Baumgartl, op. cit., 2004, pp. 276–277, nos. L2a–L2b and L4a–L4e) and can be compared to the present painting.

Knoller was initially trained by his father, Franz Knoller, and later apprenticed to the Innsbruck painter Ignaz Pögl. He subsequently studied at the Vienna Academy under Paul Troger and Michael Angelo Unterberger, whose influences can be seen in his first fresco, which he painted in 1754 for the parish church of Anras in East Tyrol. In 1755 the artist travelled to Rome and Naples, where he met Carl Joseph Count Firmian, who resided in Milan as the Minister of Lombardy and who commissioned Knoller with the decoration of the Palazzo Firmian-Vigoni in Milan (now destroyed). Between 1760 and 1765, Knoller again sojourned in Rome, where he was impressed by the works of Pompeo Batoni, Anton Raphael Mengs, and Anton von Maron. The artist completed commissions in Tyrol, Bavaria, and Vienna. Knoller married the daughter of a Milan-based merchant and was later appointed professor at the art academy. He died in Milan in 1804.