GIUSEPPE BACIGALUPO (Pian dei Preti, 1744 – Genoa, 1821) Allegorical landscape with four figures, ca. 1780-1785. Landscape with figures, ca. 1780-1785. Oil on canvas, 71 x 87 cm each. With beautiful frames, carved, gilded and contemporary to the paintings. Formerly in Genoa, Villa Saluzzo Mongiardino. Painting with certificate of free circulation. The city of Genoa in the second half of the 18th century affirmed its identity at the heart of an advanced and international culture, where an intellectual élite engaged with passion in the arts and in scientific development. Painter Giuseppe Bacigalupo, the author of our fine pendant of landscapes (historically coming from prestigious Villa Saluzzo Mongiardino in the Ligurian city), is part of this enlightened context and his works circulated also abroad, in Spain, France and England. Born in December 1744 into a peasant family in Pian dei Preti, near Tribogna, Bacigalupo’s father sent him to Genoa to study painting. When he completed his training at the Accademia Ligustica, a prestigious institution in La Superba founded in 1751, he was called back home and started painting religious works for minor local ecclesiastic patrons… […] the two landscapes here presented – one of which signed «G.B.» on a rock in the foreground – that were referred to Bacigalupo’s work in the first half of the 1780s, when the painter was still reminiscent of 17th-century works by Domenichino, Poussin and Claude Gellée he had seen during his life-changing Capitoline experience (Bartoletti 1992, cat. 125, pp. 223-224, pl. 125). In these pastoral atmospheres the painter placed few characters, to conjure profound philosophical subjects, centred on the passing of time and on man constant struggle with nature and his instincts. These ideas are clearly conveyed in this canvas depicting a wayfarer, who is trying to chase away two satyrs, representing his passions, and confidently address a graceful young woman in white, the ideal image of virtue (see GALLERIA GIAMBLANCO DIPINTI ANTICHI – Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries) [Giamblanco Gallery] Measurements H x L x W Height cm.: 70 Width cm.: 85 For more information send us an email: galleria@giamblanco.com Go to the main website Follow us on Facebook