GIUSEPPE ZAIS (Forno di Canale, 1709 - Treviso, 1781) Four landscapes with country scenes Oil on canvas, 44X36 cm (4) Provenance: Vicenza, Count Barbieri's collection Bibliography: L. Mana, in Venezia nel Settecento. Una città cosmopolita e il suo mito, exhibition catalogue edited by M. Ferrario, L. Facchin, Milan 2023, pp. 164-165, no. VI.4 The paintings presented here can be placed in the artist's maturity, at a time close to the decoration of Villa Pisani in Stra and the canvases in the Accademia in Venice, thus at the beginning of the seventh decade (cf. S. Marconi Moschini, Gallerie dell'Accademia di Venezia. Works of Art of the 17th, 18th and 19th Centuries, 1970, p. 121 no. 261). The canvases display an elegant and crystal-clear pictorial draftsmanship, particularly in the airy luminosity and description of nature, realised with loose and rapid brushstrokes. There is little biographical information on the artist, who was registered with the Fraglia of Venetian painters from 1748 to 1768, but his apprenticeship in Venice probably took place as early as 1740, the year he moved to the lagoon city. His first steps took place under the guidance of Michele Marieschi and Francesco Zuccarelli, acquiring the idyllic tones that he elaborated with personal sensitivity, expressing a painting of particular atmospheric lightness, without however renouncing a narrative spontaneity. Returning to the chronology of his conspicuous catalogue, of which only Landscape with a Classical Fountain, housed in the Accademia di Venezia, bears a certain date of 1765, one is inclined to think that the canvas under examination can be dated to the seventh decade when, having by then completely freed himself from his masters, our artist enjoyed extraordinary collecting success. It was precisely in the 1960s that Zais produced the happiest evidence of his activity, lightening his palette and proposing a personal interpretation of Arcadian landscape painting. It was at this time that the artist benefited from the special protection of Almorò Pisani (1740-1766), scion of the family and amateur painter. Reference bibliography: E. Martini, La Pittura del Settecento Veneto, Udine 1982, p. 542, fig. 774 Marco Ricci e il paesaggio veneto del Settecento, exhibition catalogue edited by D. Succi and A. Delneri, Milan 1993, ad vocem