Workshop of Jan Frans van Bloemen (Antwerp, 1722 – Rome, 1749), Lazio Landscape

Workshop of Jan Frans van Bloemen (Antwerp, 1722 – Rome, 1749) Lazio Landscape Oil on canvas, 48.5 x 64.5 cm The painting is considered to belong to the vast production of Jan Frans van Bloemen and his students, first and foremost Marcantonio Sardi, active in Rome between 1711 and 1733. The composition portrays the lush Roman countryside, specifically the village of Grottaferrata with the church and convent of Santa Maria founded by San Nilo and inhabited by Basilian monks, following a well-established image scheme by 18th-century landscape painters active in the Papal city and, in particular, by Bloemen, as evidenced by numerous comparisons of paintings now in national and international private collections (Florence, Bari, London, and New York). The three recurring figures, the washerwoman and the man and woman sitting on ancient ruins in the foreground who casually turn to her, while in the background, the perched village and the vast valley with pointed peaks open up. He belonged to a family of Flemish painters and draughtsmen, also active in Italy and France. From 1686-1687, the two brothers, Jan and Pieter, lived in Rome, where they joined the Schildersbent, Pieter with the nickname Stendardo, probably for the standards he painted in battle scenes, while Jan Frans with the nickname Orizzonte, for the ease with which he painted landscapes, previously attributed to Claude Lorrain. Jan never left Rome except for a short period of eight months, during which he visited Naples, Sicily, and Malta. In 1714 he was included among the Virtuosi al Pantheon and collaborated with Placido Costanzi and Filippo Lauri. Among his patrons and collectors, we remember the Pallavicini families (in whose Gallery there are some paintings still today) and Rospigliosi, Luigi Bonaparte, Humphry Morice, and Pope Benedict XIV. Orizzonte was fascinated by the beauty of Rome and its surroundings and inspired by the classic landscapes of Gaspard Dughet. Having the Flemish landscape tradition as a base, he had no difficulty assimilating Dughet's analytical realism and quickly becoming one of the best classical landscape painters in Rome in the first half of the 18th century [6], proceeding according to the arcadian-rococo style of the period. Van Bloemen's changing patterns of light and shadow are also characteristic of Dughet's work, so much so that Orizzonte's paintings were sometimes mistaken for works by Dughet. Van Bloemen used other artists to complete his landscapes with figures. Among these were Carlo Maratta, Placido Costanzi, Pompeo Batoni, and his brother Pieter. The clear chromatic range of the painting and the more defined outlines of the figures seem close to the early works of van Bloemen and denote attention to Jacob de Heusch.