Attributed to Alessio de Marchis

ABOUT THE ARTIST: 

Alessio de Marchis  (Naples, 1684-1752, Perugia) was an Italian painter born in Naples and like so many artistic families in Italy his son, Eugenio, followed him.    He was influenced by Salvatore Rosa who was born in Naples 74 years earlier.  Alessio’s skies and distant mountains are particularly reminiscent of Rosas’ work.  Alessio moved to Rome where he painted in the Palazzo Ruspoli, a mighty building in Rome owned by the Caetini family.   

He had a very particular style and was said to have been excellent at depictions of fire.  To paint fire from nature he set a haystack alight that went out of control.  Consequently, he was sentenced to years in prison and afterwards he left Rome never to return. He was pardoned under Pope Clement XI who became a patron. After leaving Rome he gained more patronage from the Albani family in the Palazzo Albani, but this time in Urbino.

ABOUT THE SUBJECT: 

This pair of decorative landscapes illustrate so well the qualities that Alessio was well known for.   He fuses the powerful Baroque elements of the landscapes by Salvator Rosa with the Italian influenced Dutch masters and combining with the motifs made so popular in the Grand Tour taste, such as ruins and dramatic landscapes. This fantasy-style is more affected by the later and more romantic phase of the French artist Gaspard Dughet.  His works illustrate the amalgamation between the main European styles of the day that became so popular during this period, especially with the English aristocracy. 

He worked in this Veduta style (detailed, usually large-scale painting, of Dutch origin, which became popular in its Italian form during the Grand Tour).  He had a fondest for towers, ruins, bridges and other such elements of composed landscapes.  There is a large archive of his meticulous drawings of these elements that are brought together in his oil paintings.   

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