Travellers by a river in a rocky landscape with ruins, monogrammed and dated: L. C. MDCCX, oil on canvas, 86.5 x 127 cm, framed

Literature:
Exhibition catalogue Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli. Un paesaggista alla corte dei Savoia e la sua epoca, Turin 2001, p. 125, ill.

Exhibited:
Vittorio Amedeo Cignaroli. Un paesaggista alla corte dei Savoia e la sua epoca, Turin, Fondazione Accorsi, December 2001 – March 2002, no. 20

We are grateful to Professor Filippo Pedrocco for confirming the present attribution.

The present painting is typical of Carlevarijs’s production during the first years of the second decade of the eighteenth Century. During this period he returned to similar themes that may have been produced by reference to drawings made during his travels from Venice to Rome. He is said to have made a trip to Rome from which he returned to Venice in 1698. A group of mules similar to those in the present composition can be seen in an ink drawing by Carlevarijs conserved in the Gabinetto delle Stampe e dei Disegni of the Correr Museum in Venice (see T. Pignatti and F. Pedrocco, Disegni antichi del Museo Correr, Venice 1980, p. 140).

Carlevarijs’s luminosity of colour and imagery, which also characterize the present painting, had great influence on the landscape painting of the Bellunese Marco Ricci, particularly on his works in tempera. Carlevarjis is generally known, however, for his important contribution to view painting.

Whilst he had been in Rome at the end of the 17th Century, Carlevarijs must have become aware of view paintings and capricci by artists such as Gaspar van Wittel, called Il Vanvitelli, and on his return to Venice he established himself by painting similar works, such as the Seaport and Piazzetta (Udine, Museo Civico). In 1703 he published the celebrated work Le fabriche e vedute di Venezia disegnate poste in prospettiva et intagliate da Luca Carlevaris: 104 views of Venice. It was the most complete survey of the fabric of the city ever produced and served as a model for Venetian view painters throughout the 18th Century. There is no evidence that Canaletto ever studied with him, but the younger artist must have been influenced by Carlevaris’s pictures and engravings.