Agostino Tassi

Agostino Tassi, born Agostino Buonamici (Ponzano Romano 1580 - Rome 1644), "Seascapes with figures", a pair of oils on canvas. 71.5x93 cm Expertise by Prof. Giancarlo Sestieri Agostino arrived in Rome at a very young age and entered the service of the Marquis Tassi as a page, later taking his surname. He initially worked in Tuscany (1594-1608) and later in Genoa, where he worked on frescoes in the Palazzo Spinola. Very little is known about the first fifteen years of his activity as a painter, while the years from 1615 to 1625 are the most well-documented. From 1610 he moved permanently to Rome, where he was very active as a quadraturist and landscape painter: Viviano Codazzi, Costanzo de Peris and Claude Lorrain trained in his workshop. He was close to Orazio Gentileschi and his daughter Artemisia. In his maturity, he approached the Carraccesque classicism of Domenichino. Among his works, there are numerous interventions for the decoration of various palaces and villas in Rome and its surroundings (Casino Ludovisi, Quirinale, Palazzo Pamphili, Palazzo Lancellotti), and Palazzo Rospigliosi in which Cardinal Scipione Caffarelli-Borghese had entrusted him with the fresco decoration of the Casino delle Muse, together with Gentileschi. Giovanni Battista Primi can be cited among his students. In our two scenes we see, in one, work in progress on a galley pulled ashore near a makeshift pier, and in the other the unloading of various materials from some boats, dangerously close to the coast in a stormy sea, and their transport to a fortress that stands on the rocky coast.