Carlo Antonio Tavella (Milan, 1668 – Genoa, 1738), Arcadian Landscape with Shepherds and Flock

Carlo Antonio Tavella (Milan, 1668 – Genoa, 1738) Arcadian Landscape with Shepherds and Flock Oil on canvas, 58 x 97 cm Framed, 67 x 105 cm The canvas under examination is part of the vast artistic corpus of the painter Carlo Antonio Tavella (Milan, 1668 – Genoa, 1738), considered one of the most prolific artists of the Baroque period, especially in Genoa, the city where he was most active. Born in 1668 in Milan to a couple of Genoese merchants, Tavella began his earliest training in the studio of Giuseppe Merati, where he remained for about three years, arriving in 1681 in the well-known workshop of the landscape painter Jan van Grevenbroeck, known as il Solfarolo, with whom he stayed until the age of twenty-one (1689) and where he had the opportunity to practice copying and drawing, especially with regard to landscapes and villages in flames, the master's specialty. In the same years, the artist undertook a series of trips between Lombardy, Bologna, Florence, Pisa, and Livorno, which led him to the knowledge of the works and pictorial languages of Gaspard Dughet, Salvator Rosa, and Giovanni Benedetto Castiglione, from whom he assimilated elaborate scenographic compositions and an excellent rendering of atmospheres and related changes in light. It was probably the constant contact with the Tuscan environment that allowed Tavella to be updated on Roman proposals, as evidenced by some drawings preserved at the Gabinetto dei Disegni e delle Stampe of Palazzo Rosso in Genoa, since the artist probably never stayed in the capital: the relations with the landscape painters of Roman culture active at the court of Ferdinando de' Medici, including Crescenzo Onofri, a pupil and collaborator of Dughet in Rome, and the direct vision of the cycle of frescoes with landscape subjects, created by Pandolfo Reschi in the loggia of the villa of Petraia in Florence, represented a fundamental stage in the artist's continuous training. After a very brief return to Milan, in 1690 the decisive transfer to Genoa took place (interspersed with short trips to Milan, Bergamo, and Brescia), where he immediately had the opportunity to confront the production of the Dutch painter Pieter Mulier II, known as the Cavalier Tempesta, of whom he was a favored pupil, and to complete important commissions such as the decoration with fresco landscapes of the hall of the Liberal Arts in the current Palazzo Rosso (inspired by the taste of those made by Mulier himself in the Palazzo di Nicolosio Lomellino in Genoa). In the Ligurian capital, Tavella began a vast production of landscape paintings for the local nobility and for Lombard, Piedmontese, and foreign patrons, introducing into his views figures of saints, shepherds, peasants, and washerwomen borrowed from repertory sheets provided by Paolo Gerolamo Piola and Alessandro Magnasco. Of notable artistic merit are the various Landscapes with Figures preserved in Palazzo Bianco, the Landscapes with Saints now at the Accademia Linguistica di Belle Arti of Genoa, or the canvases exhibited at the Palazzo Durazzo Pallavicini of Genoa or at the Accademia Carrara of Bergamo, which share with our canvas a thin and dynamic brushstroke, accompanied by a distinctive palette of colors, oriented towards pastel shades and modulated on the contrast between light and shadow. Precisely the ability in the atmospheric description contributed to infuse his landscapes, retracing the classic Roman ones and those typical of French painting, with a unique depth and vivacity, giving the space effective suggestive and refined aspects. Tavella died in Genoa on December 2, 1738, and was buried in the church of S. Domenico. The biographer Carlo Giuseppe Ratti recalls the daughters Angiola and Teresa, who followed in their father's footsteps becoming accomplished painters, in addition to the best pupil of his workshop, Niccolò Micone, who became known by the nickname "Lo Zoppo".