- Details
- Category: Room 28: The XVIIIth century
The cycle dedicated to the Four Seasons was painted by Marcantonio Franceschini for one of the rooms in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, the residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy Prince of Carignano between 1716 and 1717, as the payments entered in the painter's notebook bear witness.
In all four paintings, made in a simple elegant style, there are those criteria of naturalness and clarity that make Marcantonio Franceschini one of the most prominent Bolognese painters of the Arcadian cultural movement.
In Spring, the lush countryside and blue hills provide the background for young people intent on weaving flower garlands, while in Summer, the fields of golden wheat and the stream tell us how dry the hot season is.
On the wall facing it, Fall is represented by the beautiful peasant girl with red cheeks, busy pressing grapes, and giving an alluring look to the young man who watches her, ecstatic.
Winter, on the other hand, is set inside a loggia, with a view of the snowy hills in the distance. A family warms itself around the fire. The father seeks comfort in the cold, drinking a little wine. A child blows on the fire to revive the flame. Another warms his feet. The mother feeds her youngest child, while the grandmother is busy spinning wool.
The horizon line, the trees that close the scenes laterally, the clothing and colours, create a feeling of continuity between the four paintings: the cycle of the seasons is also the cycle of life, represented explicitly in the Winter scene with the representation of the various ages.
- Details
- Category: Room 28: The XVIIIth century
The painting was created by the Bolognese Giuseppe Maria Crespi, an ironic artist who loved genre scenes and was strongly attracted by the faces of the common people in his city.
It depicts a bewitching young girl clutching a cat to her chest and holding a rose very carefully, while her hypnotic gaze seduces the viewer as she stares directly into his eyes. The symbolic meaning is clear: the small animal and the flower, though beautiful, soft and delicate, both conceal hidden dangers. The claws and thorns suggest the perils of love.
On the small canvas, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, shows his ability to use painting to allude to the affinity between the woman and the cat in the triangular face, the expertly painted headdress with two points that look like small feline ears, and the elongated black eyes.
The artist, in this painting made up of areas of shadow and light, based on studies of Guercino's models, combines danger and beauty, giving an image to the saying “there is no rose without thorns” and succeeds in expressing the woman’s dual and ambiguous nature.
- Details
- Category: Room 28: The XVIIIth century
The cycle dedicated to the Four Seasons was painted by Marcantonio Franceschini for one of the rooms in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, the residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy Prince of Carignano between 1716 and 1717, as the payments entered in the painter's notebook bear witness.
In all four paintings, made in a simple elegant style, there are those criteria of naturalness and clarity that make Marcantonio Franceschini one of the most prominent Bolognese painters of the Arcadian cultural movement.
In Spring, the lush countryside and blue hills provide the background for young people intent on weaving flower garlands, while in Summer, the fields of golden wheat and the stream tell us how dry the hot season is.
On the wall facing it, Fall is represented by the beautiful peasant girl with red cheeks, busy pressing grapes, and giving an alluring look to the young man who watches her, ecstatic.
Winter, on the other hand, is set inside a loggia, with a view of the snowy hills in the distance. A family warms itself around the fire. The father seeks comfort in the cold, drinking a little wine. A child blows on the fire to revive the flame. Another warms his feet. The mother feeds her youngest child, while the grandmother is busy spinning wool.
The horizon line, the trees that close the scenes laterally, the clothing and colours, create a feeling of continuity between the four paintings: the cycle of the seasons is also the cycle of life, represented explicitly in the Winter scene with the representation of the various ages.
- Details
- Category: Room 28: The XVIIIth century
The cycle dedicated to the Four Seasons was painted by Marcantonio Franceschini for one of the rooms in the Belvedere Palace in Vienna, the residence of Prince Eugene of Savoy Prince of Carignano between 1716 and 1717, as the payments entered in the painter's notebook bear witness.
In all four paintings, made in a simple elegant style, there are those criteria of naturalness and clarity that make Marcantonio Franceschini one of the most prominent Bolognese painters of the Arcadian cultural movement.
In Spring, the lush countryside and blue hills provide the background for young people intent on weaving flower garlands, while in Summer, the fields of golden wheat and the stream tell us how dry the hot season is.
On the wall facing it, Fall is represented by the beautiful peasant girl with red cheeks, busy pressing grapes, and giving an alluring look to the young man who watches her, ecstatic.
Winter, on the other hand, is set inside a loggia, with a view of the snowy hills in the distance. A family warms itself around the fire. The father seeks comfort in the cold, drinking a little wine. A child blows on the fire to revive the flame. Another warms his feet. The mother feeds her youngest child, while the grandmother is busy spinning wool.
The horizon line, the trees that close the scenes laterally, the clothing and colours, create a feeling of continuity between the four paintings: the cycle of the seasons is also the cycle of life, represented explicitly in the Winter scene with the representation of the various ages.
- Details
- Category: Room 28: The XVIIIth century
The painter, the undisputed master of Italian art in those years, here employs the canons of the genre scene, of which he was one of the most renowned specialists, showing us a glimpse of real life in eighteenth-century Bologna, an image that almost seems to be taken from the daily life of the humblest classes, represented with humanity and a touch of irony.
In the courtyard of a damp unhealthy house, an elderly woman, busy washing the laundry, is indignant at the brashness of the barefoot man, who stands near the wall to urinate. With an open mouth, she seems to be shouting an insult, and her hand looks as though it wants to hit him. An annoyed cat tries to scratch him.
In the background, in the shadows, a young mother is intent on feeding her child, and is turned slightly to look at the scene, amused.
Crespi applies the colour in rapid strokes and lingers on details to render the material consistency of things: from the stockings hanging out to dry to the gleam of copper in the few scattered tools, the wicker basket on the wall, and the old lintel in wood that strongly dominates the scene.
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