Giuseppe Zais (Belluno 1709 - Treviso 1781)

Giuseppe Zais (Canale d'Agordo, Belluno 1709 - Treviso 1781) Pair of paintings The Assault of the Brigands After the Assault Oil on canvas, 108 x 42 cm. each Framed 128 x 62 cm. We thank Dr. Federica Spadotto for studying and attributing the present pair of paintings to the catalog of Giuseppe Zais. Below is her in-depth critical study. Details: link https://www.antichitacastelbarco.it/it/prodotto/giuseppe-zais--pendant-di-dipinti The Venetian landscape of the golden age has accustomed the public and scholars to extraordinary - and unexpected - contaminations between genres, sealing an artistic scene very permeable to international suggestions. This undoubtedly occurs because of the "foreign" origin linked to the rural repertoire, which registers the fundamental contribution of transalpine references (Spadotto, 2014) regarding the inspiration and expressive alphabet of native artists. Among these, the experience of Giuseppe Zais (Belluno 1709 - Treviso 1781) is fundamental. This painter emigrated to the city of the lion presumably between the 1730s and 1740s, where he would have apprenticed with the battle painter Francesco Simonini (Parma, 1686 - Venice or Florence, post 1755). It was, in fact, established practice for any painter who aspired to an official role - i.e., inscription in the Fraglia (artists’ guild) - to practice alongside an established figure, such as the Parmesan master. More than a real apprenticeship, one must imagine the young painter active as a boy tackling the war themes that had made Simonini famous in Venice, where commissions flowed in and resulting in the need to entrust part of the work to a valid assistant (i.e., our Giuseppe). Only recently, thanks to the pictorial essays made known by Egidio Martini, has a nucleus of paintings executed by Giuseppe (fig.1) in close adherence to the repertoire of his master been identified, and which for a long time had been believed to be Simonini autographs. The analysis of these examples highlights close affinities of form and style compared to those of Francesco, on which Zais grafts some guiding characteristics that will become typical of his style, including the round tower and the characteristic physiognomy of the faces. Over the years, our artist will archive this experience in favor of the sunny mid-days inspired by Zuccarelli, in addition to collaborating with his son Gaetano (documented between 1765 and 1798) in his genre of choice. It is precisely a landscape made by the latter and made known by this writer (Spadotto, op. cit., 2014, fig.284, plate XLV; fig.2) which offers an important documentary piece to shed light on the final creative season of our artist, passed over in silence by the sources and devoid of autograph works. In the Ideal Landscape with figures, statues and animals at the watering hole (fig.2), Zais junior hands down a compendium of his father's production, expressed through a rather dense ductus and a chromatic grammar played on "earthy" tones, in keeping with the revival of Marco Ricci (Belluno , 1676 - Venice, 1730) very much in vogue in the second half of the 18th century. Zuccarelli himself (Pitigliano, 1702 - Florence, 1788) had yielded to the seduction of the Belluno painter, creating the Bull Hunt (fig.3) now at the Gallerie dell'Accademia in Venice, a true exemplum with respect to the theme, where the same pictorial ingredients mentioned above emerge. The remarkable pendant under examination fits into this horizon, which "unfolds" like a true artistic testament to Giuseppe's long artistic journey, from the beginnings as a specialist in battles to the extreme synthesis of the late eighteenth century. Simonini's soldiers become knights at the mercy of an attack by brigands, who kill and strip them of all their belongings, as happens in After the Assault, where the compositional layout of the post-battle camp hosts the outcome of the fatal crime, perpetrated by characters in whom we recognize the clothes and physiognomy of the villagers immortalized by Giuseppe in the famous rural scenes. The taste for detail, of clear Zuccarelli descent, merges with a fast, immediate style, which does not betray, however, the definition of the foliage in the typical large trees called to frame the scenes, where the inspiration of the aforementioned Ricci merges with the Northern European "fashion" which became established in Venetian figurative culture in the late eighteenth century. Despite what the public's taste had expressed for much of the golden age, electing languid Arcadian poetry as the territory of its aesthetic ideals, the decline of the Serenissima brings back the echoes of that "stepmother nature" frequented by the first generation of landscape painters, which returns, very current, as a metaphor of a world destined to become extinct about ten years after his death.