(Venice 1668–1725) Summoning the troops, oil on canvas, 170 x 221 cm, framed

Provenance: European private collection

Certificates: Giuseppe Fiocco, 1942, as Francesco Guardi; Antonio Morassi, as Francesco Guardi (in photocopy); Mina Gregori, as Antonio Guardi, c. 1730-1735 (in photocopy).

Literature: M. S. Proni, Antonio Maria Marini, l‘opera completa, Naples 1992, p. 233, fig. 3.50a

Like its pendant, this large painting was originally attributed to both Francesco Guardi and then to Gianantonio Guardi, but has been recently assigned to Antonio Marini‘s most accomplished period and has also been published as such (M. S. Proni, Antonio Maria Marini, l‘opera completa, Naples, 1992, p. 233, fig. 3.50a). Works by Antonio Marini have long been mistaken for those by artists such as Marco Ricci, Alessandro Magnasco, or Salvator Rosa. In 1962, Roberto Bassi-Rathgeb‘s discovery of a signature in a painting at the Accademia Carrara in Bergamo („L‘imprevedibile Antonio Marini“ in: Bollettino del Museo Civico di Padova LI, 1962) prompted Antonio Marini‘s becoming the subject of new art historical research. The artist consequently received the attention due to him as an important Venetian landscape painter and one of the most significant practitioners of the battle genre, as is also underscored by the outstanding quality of the present painting and its pendant. In the present composition, the artist offers us his most excellent repertoire as a landscape painter, which is complemented here by a battle scene. The painting therefore constitutes a combination of two different genres. Horsemen, soldiers, and carriages are skilfully arranged on parallel planes converging in the distinctly rendered valley in the background, with the view opening up towards the castle and its tower prominently discernible as the visual focus of the scene. A similar building comparably positioned also reappears in the painting Battle Scene with Ruins in a private collection (M. S. Proni, op. cit., 1992, p. 232, fig. 3.47a). As in the present work, it was the artist‘s intention to create a wide and deep space. However, in the latter work the soldiers‘ engagements extend beyond the boundaries of the landscape setting, which is reminiscent of examples by Salvator Rosa. The large Cavalry Battle in the Museo Civico in Padua (M. S. Proni, op. cit., 1992, p. 232, fig. 3.27b), whose former attribution to Gianantonio Guardi was not unfounded, displays similar features (D. Succi, „Due inedite battaglie di Gianantonio Guardi al Museo Civico di Padova in Inverno ‚91“, exhibition catalogue, Milan, 1991, p. 75, fig. 1). In Summoning the Troops, the straw-coloured hues, in combination with the scenery‘s ochre tones and the latter‘s mingling with those of the sky on the horizon, create light contrasts to the dark figures in the foreground. Marini seems to have overcome the atmospheric paradigms of the Baroque and anticipated a painting style in which modelling is achieved by means of light. The complexity of the composition, the refined colouring, the light effects, the swift, yet controlled brushwork, and the application of the paint, which seems to be less impasto than in other works by Marini, permit us to date the painting into the artist‘s maturity. We are grateful to Maria Silvia Proni for cataloguing the present painting.

Provenance: European private collection Certificates: Giuseppe Fiocco, 1942, as Francesco Guardi; Antonio Morassi, as Francesco Guardi (in photocopy); Mina Gregori, as Antonio Guardi, c. 1730-1735 (in photocopy). Literature: M. S. Proni, Antonio Maria M