Architecture and Ruins by Pietro Paltronieri

 

 

These two caprices, or capricci, are architectural fantasies, blending archaeological ruins and architecture in imaginary combinations, brought to life by figures, in a picturesque or elegiac (all’elegìaco) style. The caprice orveduta ideata in Venetian painting between the late^17th and early^18th centuries developed into a distinct genre.

This genre is the heir to the architectural frescoes painted in^16th-century palaces, notably the ceiling decorations known as quadrattura, a Baroque pictorial genre designed to simulate architectural reliefs on the flat vaults of churches. More broadly, and as the Italian art historian Giorgio Vasari (1511–1574) points out, the term ‘capriccio’ refers to the enigmatic traits that bear witness to a painter’s originality and his own pictorial imagination (un suo capriccio). Thus, with regard to Filippino Lippi, he pays particular attention to the ‘strange caprices he expresses in his paintings’. This taste for the unusual also extends to music, as theorised by the German composer Michael Schultze (Praetorius) in 1608, who defined the musical caprice as ‘a sort of improvised fantasia, in which one moves from one theme to another’.

These two combined aspects—namely, a taste for the powerful decorative effect of architectural elements and a personal vision of the landscape— encouraged^17th-century easel painters to produce this type of view for art lovers. Thus, the landscape painting in perspective featuring ruins and rivers from the late 1600s was revitalised in the early 1700s with the elegant and imaginative rocaille style, whose decorative effect was clearly inspired by theatre, and of which Pietro Paltronieri was a leading figure.

With Pietro Paltronieri, who worked mainly in Rome and Bologna, but also in Vienna, the ‘capriccio’ derives its uniqueness from the rapid execution of the figures, producing works that reveal the act of painting itself, in a simplified colour palette playing on shades of pink, blue and yellow. The works on display at the Hôtel de la Marine can be compared to several similar compositions by Paltronieri, who mainly produced large canvases to adorn the halls of Bologna’s palaces, such as those painted around 1718–1722 for the Caprara Palace or those for the Palazzo Rosso in Genoa. The artist was also highly sought after by art lovers who had stayed in Italy and who, on their return, commissioned works to adorn their homes, such as Sir Thomas Anson for Shugborough Hall in the United Kingdom.

 

Maria Cristina Bandera, Paltronieri – Pietro Paltronieri, il Mirandolese (Mirandola 1673–Bologna 1741 ), Modena, Cassa di Risparmio di Mirandola, 1990.