CARLO ANTONIO TAVELLA (Milan, 1668 - Genoa, 1738) Landscape with figures Oil on canvas, 33.5X44 cm Provenance: Private collection The author of an extensive pictorial production, it is clear from Tavella's works that his training could not have been limited to the Genoese sphere, but originated, as indicated by the sources, through study trips to Florence and Rome without neglecting the examples of the Venetian landscape painters, sharing an aesthetic path following the example of Pieter Mulier (Haarlem, 1637 ; Milan, 1701), with whom he would collaborate fruitfully until the latter's death. His precocious professional fortune is documented by the frescoes in Palazzo Rosso in Genoa commissioned in 1691, when Carlo Antonio was just 23 years old, a feat that confirms his undoubted mastery of his trade and the consequent entrepreneurial organisation of his workshop. If in part similar to Tempesta are the illustrative achievements, it must nevertheless be emphasised that ours expresses 'a more suave and delicate manner' (G. Ratti, Delle Vite dei pittori etc., 1769, II p. 202), less dramatic. This analogy demonstrates once again that the quality of his art can be equalled by the best Capitoline examples and this is confirmed by observing the canvas under examination which, datable to his maturity, expresses a clear evolution in an Arcadian and Rocaille key, capable of going beyond 17th century dictates to arrive at visions that are purely 18th century. Returning to the work, we perceive how the painter dilutes the naturalism of Nordic inspiration inferred from Tempest with a more Arcadian temperament. Typical is the painter's skill in depicting the changing atmospheric luminosity reflected in the landscape, modulating the palette in pastel shades, measuring depth through refined colour ranges. The light-shadow contrast, in addition to distinguishing the narrative in a dreamlike sense, thus becomes an artifice capable of scanning the visual perspective, allowing us to push our gaze as far as the horizon with a succession of scenes in perfect eurhythmic concreteness. These data suffice to confirm the extraordinary quality of the work, to be placed among the best in the corpus, a quality that is further corroborated by the good conservation of the drafting that stylistically leads to a dating around the 1820s. Reference bibliography: M. Roethlisberger Bianco, Cavalier Pietro Tempesta and his time, University of Delaware; Press 1970 G. Algeri, Considerazioni sui disegni del Tavella nelle raccolte degli Uffizi, in Disegni genovesi dal Cinquecento al Settecento, giornate di studio (9 ; 10 May 1989), Kunsthistorisches Institut in Florenz, Florence 1992, pp. 185-194 E. Bianchi, Appunti sul catalogo di Carlo Antonio Tavella e del Tempesta, in Arte lombarda, 116, 1996,1, pp. 78-82 M. T. Caracciolo, Per Tavella e Zais, appunti sul paesaggio arcadico settecentesco, in Antologia di Belle Arti Studi sul Settecento, Turin 1998, pp. 36-41