Ilario Mercanti "Lo Spolverini" (1657-1734)-Battle

Ilario Mercanti, known as "Lo Spolverini" (Parma, 1657-1734) - Nocturnal battle scene Oil painting on canvas Appraisal: Prof. Giancarlo Sestieri Dimensions: 147x103cm FRAME 130x87cm CANVAS MERCANTI, Ilario Giacinto, known as lo Spolverini. – He was born in Parma on January 13, 1657, in the parish of S. Gervaso, according to his birth certificate. He may have chosen to call himself Lo Spolverini to conceal his Jewish origins, adopting a connotation that would evoke his status as a workshop boy in charge of the preparatory "dusting" for frescoes, since he would have worked in this role on the decoration of the Certosa of Parma at a young age (Silingardi Salvini; Arisi Riccardi). The painter's training took place within the workshop of F. Monti, known as Brescianino delle Battaglie, after an unconfirmed, but rather probable, apprenticeship with his father (active in Parma in 1660, according to the only documentary evidence concerning him, in the pictorial decoration of two triumphal arches); however, the date of the beginning of his apprenticeship remains uncertain. In the reconstruction of the origins of the M.'s formal language, critics, even the most recent ones, consider plausible (although not supported by any documentary reference) the hypothesis of his journey to Florence in his youth, where the M. would have gone to observe the works of J. Courtois the Borgognone. In this circumstance, he may have come into contact with P. Reschi and assimilated formal and compositional elements drawn from the language of J. Callot and S. Della Bella (Ceschi Lavagetto). The Venetian journey that the M. would have made together with Monti to illustrate the exploits of Doge Francesco Morosini against the Turks also remains unproven: none of the works produced on that occasion (originally located in the Morosini palace in campo S. Stefano, now partly in the Correr Museum in Venice) can be convincingly associated with the ways of Mercanti. And yet, the influences of this supposed trip to Venice, placed between 1690 and 1695, would be linked, according to a unanimous and consolidated critical tradition, to the stylistic evolution of the M., in the choice of chromatic values of more marked tonal ancestry and in the adoption of the characteristic "macchiette" as a connotative trait of his pictorial style. In the layout of this formal paradigm, echoes and suggestions from S. Mazzoni, F. Maffei and S. Rosa would also find space. The sources attest, however, in the same years, to a high degree of integration of the M. in the Farnese cultural circuit of Parma: in 1692 he was granted a patent of familiarity by Duke Ranuccio II and later he was appointed court painter. It was evidently in this context that the M. specialized in celebratory genre painting and in historical-encomiastic narration, focusing on a specific area of expertise in battle painting.