FRANCESCO FOSCHI (Ancona, 1710 - Rome, 1780) Snowy Landscape Oil on canvas, 96X129 cm Provenance: Rome, Tito Gobbi collection Famous for his snowy landscapes, Foschi trained in Francesco Mancini's workshop in Fano, benefiting from the protection of Count Raimondo Bonaccorsi, for whom he painted twelve episodes from Ovid's Metamorphoses. In 1729, the artist moved to Rome, where he developed a keen interest in the views of Panini and Vanvitelli and the landscape painters of the Baroque age. The earliest known works depicting winter views are conserved in the Grenoble Museum. Dated 1750, they are the founders of a production that became his speciality. This type of work was an extraordinary collector's success and, although of Flemish and Dutch ancestry, Foschi succeeded in imparting a highly personal and strictly Italian character to it. Thanks to the tonal emphasis of white colour and a skilful use of greys, ochres and an extraordinary technique, the painter was able to achieve results of exceptional quality and naturalistic verisimilitude, depicting trees stripped bare by frost, mists, clouds and milky skies, in which the figures are overwhelmed by the wild natural setting. In these scenes dominated by wintry luminosity, the realistic-climatic effect exceeds the picturesque and seems to herald the objective aesthetics of Neo-Classicism and pre-Romantic sentiments. Returning to the canvas under examination, it can be compared with the Winter Landscape with Figures and Village in the Background referred to the artist by Annalisa Scarpa and recently on the Milan art market, in which the same atmospheric and narrative sensibility is evident, constructed with body-like brushstrokes that pick up the colour, highlighting the clouds and snow cover. Reference bibliography: L. Salerno, I pittori di vedute in Italia (1580-1830), Rome 1991, pp. 284-287 M. Vinci Corsini, Francesco Foschi, Milan 2003, ad vocem