Italian school; XVIII century.

Italian school; XVIII century.
"Landscape."
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Measurements: 37 x 48 cm; 63 x 72 cm (frame).
This romantic landscape of the 18th century, of Italian school, is an example of the fascination for the idealized nature and the poetic melancholy that characterize the landscape painting of the time. A waterfall of pristine waters descends with a cadence punctuated by large boulders, tumbling down into a valley where a few goats and sheep graze peacefully. These figures add a sense of scale to the whole, so that the sublime landscape contrasts with the note of bucolic life, a frequent solution in Italian painting of the period, among whose exponents Philippe Peter Roos stands out. Precisely, it is in the area of influence of this German painter settled in Rome in which the painting we show seems to move. Roos made landscapes with animals very similar in composition and style to the one we show here, with valleys and steep cliffs alternating different shades of amber and brown light, under a luminous and idealized atmosphere. As in Roos's works, here the sky, of a light blue, is marbled by light clouds. The evening light, reflected in the golden contours of the treetops, softens the forms and bathes the landscape in a warm, enveloping tonality.