GASPARE LANDI (Piacenza, 1754 - Rome, 1830) Double portrait of a mother with her son (c. 1800-1810) Oil on canvas, 96.5X74.5 cm After intermittent training in Brescia, Parma and Piacenza, it was thanks to the benevolence of Marquis Landi delle Caselle that the artist moved to Rome in 1781. In the Eternal City, the painter devoted himself to the study of antiquity and Renaissance painting, elaborating an up-to-date neoclassical language. Domenico Corvi, Pompeo Batoni and Mengs were his mentors and the work under examination dates back to his maturity, when the painter dialogued with the most notable artists of his time: Pietro Benvenuti and Vincenzo Camuccini. During his early years, his portrait production was characterised by allegorical transfiguration and complex settings, but he soon changed his lexicon by paying greater attention to naturalistic aspects of Enlightenment taste, looking to the examples of Anton Raphael Mengs, Angelica Kauffmann, Martin Knoller and Andrea Appiani. In doing so, the author arrived at a synthesis that was antithetical to the official and parade style, concentrating more on the physiognomies and expressive aspects of the effigies and their affective connotations, giving rise to a natural and, we might say, 'moral' type of portraiture, as the work presented here demonstrates. In this case, Landi offers us a spontaneous portrayal of maternal love without conceding anything to the setting, outlining the figures against an abstract background and emphasising the sentimental motif, achieved thanks to a highly refined pictorial conduction both in the drafting and in the colour combinations. The work is accompanied by a critical card by Stefano Grandesso. Reference bibliography: G. L. Mellini, Per Gaspare Landi, recapitulation, in Labyrinthos, XIX, 2000, 37-38, pp. 65-120 S. Grandesso, La vicenda esemplare di un pittore neoclassico. Gaspare Landi, Canova e l'ambiente erudito romano, in Roma moderna e contemporanea, X, 2002, 1-2, pp. 179-203 V. Sgarbi, Gaspare Landi, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2004, ad vocem S. Grandesso, L'Edipo a Colono. Giuseppe Bossi e Gaspare Landi in gara di emulazione nel ritrovato dipinto landiano, in Dall'ideale classico al Novecento. Scritti per Fernando Mazzocca, edited by S. Grandesso, F. Leone, Cinisello Balsamo 2018, pp. 58-63