The works come from the deposits of the National Galleries of Ancient Art, and the exhibition is curated by Luigi Gallo with Paola Nicita and Yuri Primarosa. Barberini Palace.
The Landscape Hall, located on the main floor of Palazzo Barberini, originally served as a private dining room. The walls, decorated in 1859 in a neo-baroque style, are marked by large panels representing the Lazio fiefdoms of the Barberini family. Fourteen paintings are exhibited here, coming partly from the deposits, and partly from the Museo Laboratorio delle Gallerie, the picture gallery on the second floor of Palazzo Barberini where works usually intended for research and teaching projects for scholars, specialists and post-graduates in History of the art, and only rarely accessible to the public.
The fourteen landscapes testify to the definition of a new relationship between man and nature and the renewal of the genre between the 17th and 18th centuries, stimulated by the partnership between artists and men of science, which led to a profound transformation in the way of observing and depicting the landscape, which from a mere background element becomes the protagonist.
Landscapes, caprices and Roman ruins
The different types of landscape are represented on display, ranging from ideal compositions to views, from rural evocations to caprices with ancient ruins. They range from the poetic paintings of Nicolas Poussin (Les Andelys, 1594 – Rome, 1665), champion of seventeenth-century French painting, to the so-called Master of the Birch, identified as Gaspard Dughet, up to the Flemish Jan Frans van Bloemen, known as the Horizon
(Antwerp, 1662 – Rome, 1749), in which nature hosts mythological and sacred events offering wonderful luminous effects. We then move on to exact views, such as the magnificent work by Pietro da Cortona (Cortona, 1596 – Rome, 1669), one of the first chamber paintings with the representation of an existing place, and by the German Jacob Philipp Hackert (Prenzlau, 1737 – Careggi, 1807), the greatest representative of Enlightenment analytical landscape painting: the masters, a century apart from each other, masterfully depict the unmistakable light of the Roman landscape. And we can still admire the architectural whims and pastoral scenes, genres that enjoyed great success in Italy and France, as evidenced by the canvases of Andrea Locatelli (Rome, 1695-1741) and Giovanni Paolo Pannini (Piacenza, 1691 – Rome, 1765 ), and of the most famous painters of the court of Versailles in the eighteenth century, François Boucher (Paris, 1703 – 1770), Jean-Honoré
Fragonard (Grasse, 1732 – Paris, 1806) and Hubert Robert (Paris, 1733 – 1808), who stayed in the papal capital as pensionnaires of the French Academy. In the paintings on display, Rome and its countryside become points of inspiration to represent a visionary nature, imbued with pre-romantic sensitivity, where the actions of the characters and the architecture act as a counterpoint to the timelessness of the classical world.
Cover artwork: Jacob Philipp Hackert (Prenzlau, 1737 – Careggi, 1807) View of the Alban Hills from the Osteria del Fico, 1789 oil on canvas, 50 x 82 cm Courtesy photo: National Galleries of Ancient Art, Rome (MiC) – Bibliotheca Hertziana, Institute Max Planck for the history of art/Enrico Fontolan.
The work depicts the countryside south of Rome, near Lake Albano. The inscription “All'osteria del fico / towards Marino” is painted on the rock. / Ph. Hackert p. 1789”. The tavern can still be found in Grottaferrata on Via Latina. The profiles of the buildings and churches of Marino and Castel Gandolfo stand out in the background. The painter knew these scenarios well, but he created the painting two years after having seen the places for the last time, traveling with Goethe. In his views, Hackert abandons the classical idealization of nature and experiments with a new type of painting from life, lenticular and analytical, inspired by the Enlightenment. He carefully chose the landscape to depict, in a point where the relationship between the elements is harmonious, calibrating the exact moment in which the golden light expresses its best effects on nature.
National Galleries of Ancient Art – Palazzo Barberini (Landscape Hall) Rome, via delle Quattro Fontane 13
