Giuseppe Antonio Pianca (1703-post 1762), Attributed to - Paesaggio Pastorale

Main characteristics of the work:
Giuseppe Antonio Pianca (1703 – after 1762) • “Pastoral Landscape” • Oil on canvas • 47×60 cm, 68×81 cm with frame • Old label on the frame attributing to Francesco Zuccarelli • Recently subjected to complete conservation cleaning • Documented provenance from Lucas-Milano, later Italian private collection
Work belonging to the 18th-century Italian landscape painting, Rococo style.

Extraordinary eighteenth-century pastoral landscape, dominated by the large central tree and animated by pedestrians, a woman with a child, dogs and herds. The composition, fully inserted in the Rococo taste, combines elegance, naturalness and an idyll of the landscape, with figures of strong presence in the foreground and a suggestive opening toward the landscape in the background. The recent complete conservation cleaning has restored greater legibility, depth and visual impact to the work.

Although the work bears an old label with the name Francesco Zuccarelli, it was cataloged and sold by Lucas-Milano as Giuseppe Antonio Pianca, with explicit reference to Pianca’s works published on pp. 292–293, figs. 68–69, of the monograph “Giuseppe Antonio Pianca” edited by Filippo Maria Ferro, cited for their affinities with the styles of Francesco Zuccarelli.

In this light, the old label on the frame bearing the name “Francesco Zuccarelli 1702–1788” testifies to a previous attribution to the celebrated landscape painter, perfectly understandable considering the close affinities between the landscape painting of the two masters.

This previous attribution finds a further significant parallel in a Zuccarelli painting preserved at the Pinacoteca Tosio Martinengo in Brescia and dated 1740–1760, in which, as in the present work, there is a woman with a child on her back, a pedestrian seated with his dog under a tree and a broad landscape in the background. Particularly interesting is also the pumpkin-shaped flask beside the pedestrian: Zuccarelli used this motif several times in his compositions, almost as a figurative nod to his own surname. The presence of pumpkins and flasks in his works has been interpreted as a kind of figurative signature and is also recalled in Sotheby’s and Christie’s catalogues, making this detail even more significant in the context of the old Zuccarelli attribution.

The previous attribution to Zuccarelli is thus historically and iconographically understandable.

The work is presented here as Giuseppe Antonio Pianca, in continuity with the previous sale catalog and with the bibliographic comparisons indicated.

Pianca was by no means a minor figure of the 18th-century Italian scene, an original and strong-willed painter, whom scholars such as Roberto Longhi and Giovanni Testori also studied. Born in Agnona, in Valsesia, in 1703 and documented until 1762, he also produced landscapes with shepherds and herds; criticism also documents his interest in Arcadian painting and in Francesco Zuccarelli, whom he regarded with particular attention in his landscape production.

The purchaser will receive the work in careful, sturdy packaging. Very fast shipping.

Color rendering and the perception of details in the photos presented here may vary slightly depending on the screen used for viewing; in person the work retains its full visual presence.