Alessandro Magnasco (February 4, 1667 – March 12, 1749), also known as il Lissandrino, was an Italian late-Baroque painter active mostly in Milan and Genoa. He is best known for stylized, fantastic, often phantasmagoric genre or landscape scenes. Magnasco's distinctive style is characterized by fragmented forms rendered with swift brushstrokes and darting flashes of light.Alessandro Magnasco, called il Lissandrino (Genoa 1667-1749), Saint Joseph's dream at Christie's
Life Born in Genoa to a minor artist, Stefano Magnasco, he apprenticed with Valerio Castello, and finally with Filippo Abbiati (1640–1715) in Milan. Except for 1703–09 (or 1709–11)Wittkower 1993, p. 478 when working in Florence for the Grand Duke Cosimo III, Magnasco labored in Milan until 1735, when he returned to his native Genoa. Magnasco often collaborated with placing figures in the landscapes of Tavella and the ruins of Clemente Spera in Milan.
Mature style
After 1710, Magnasco excelled in producing small, hypochromatic canvases with eerie and gloomy landscapes and ruins, or crowded interiors peopled with small, often lambent and cartoonishly elongated characters. The people in his paintings were often nearly liquefacted beggars dressed in tatters, rendered in flickering, nervous brushstrokes. Often they deal with unusual subjects such as synagogue services, Quaker meetings, robbers' gatherings, catastrophes, and interrogations by the Inquisition. His sentiments regarding these subjects are generally unclear.
A century later he would be described as a "romantic painter: who painted with candid touches, and ingenious expressiveness, little figures in Gothic churches; or in solitude, hermits and monks; or scoundrels assembled in town squares; soldiers in barracks".Dizionario geografico-storico-statistico-commerciale degli stati del Re di Sardegna, Volume 7, by Goffredo Casalis, Turin (1840), page 726: "potrebbe chiamarsi pittore romantico: dipingeva a tocchi franchi, e con isprezzatura ingegnosa, figure piccole in chiese d'architettura gotica, o in solitudini, romiti, cappuccini; ovvero mariuoli sulle piazze, soldati ne’quartieri". The art historian and critic Luigi Lanzi described him as the Cerquozzi of his school; thereby signaling him into the circle of followers of the Bamboccianti. He indicates that Magnasco had "figures scarcely more than a span large ... painted with humor and delight", but not as if this effect had been the intention of the painter. Lanzi says these eccentric pieces were favored by the Grand Duke Giovanni Gastone Medici of Florence. Magnasco also found contemporary patronage for his work among prominent families and collectors of Milan, for example the Arese and Casnedi families.Spike 1986, p. 87. This series of patrons underscores the fact that Magnasco was more esteemed by outsiders than by his fellow Genoese; as Lanzi noted, "his bold touch, though joined to a noble conception and to correct drawing, did not attract in Genoa, because it is far removed from the finish and union of tints which (Genoese) masters followed."Lanzi, p. 287. In the twentieth century, Rudolf Wittkower derided him as "solitary, tense, strange, mystic, ecstatic, grotesque, and out of touch with the triumphal course of the Venetian school" from 1710 onward.
Origins of his style
The influences on his work are obscure. Some suspect the influence of the loose painterly style of his Venetian contemporary Sebastiano Ricci (1659–1734), the Genoese Domenico Piola (1627–1703) and Gregorio de Ferrari, although the most prominent of the three, Ricci, painted in a more monumental and mythic style, and these artists may in fact have been influenced by Magnasco. Magnasco was likely influenced by Milanese il Morazzone (1573–1626) in the emotional quality of his work. Some of his canvases (see ill. (q.)) recall Salvator Rosa's romantic sea-lashed landscapes, and his affinity for paintings of brigands. The diminutive scale of Magnasco's figures relative to the landscape is comparable to Claude Lorrain's more airy depictions. While his use of figures of ragged beggars has been compared with Giuseppe Maria Crespi's genre style, Crespi's figures are larger, more distinct, and individual, and it is possible that Crespi himself may have influenced Magnasco. Others point to the influences of late Baroque Italian genre painters, the Roman Bamboccianti, and in his exotic scenography, the well-disseminated engravings of the Frenchman Callot.
Legacy Magnasco's work may have influenced Marco Ricci, Giuseppe Bazzani, Francesco Maffei, and the famed painters de tocco (by touch) Gianantonio and Francesco Guardi in Venice.
His depictions of torture in The Inquisition (or perhaps named Interrogations in a Jail) are an atypical subject for Italian baroque paintings, as were his depictions of the religious ceremonies of Jews and Quakers. Yet it remains unsolved, according to Wittkower, "how much quietism or criticism or farce went into the making of his pictures".Wittkower, 1993, p. 478
Selected works
PaintingDatesSiteLinkGathering of Quakers1695Uffizi, FlorenceTheodosius Repulsed from Church by St. Ambrose1700-10Art Institute of ChicagoChrist attended by angelsc. 1705Museo del Prado, MadridChrist and Samaritan Woman1705-10Getty Museum, Los AngelesNoli Me Tangere1705-10ibid The Hunting Scene1710Wadsworth Atheneum Muletrain and Castle1710LouvreBacchanalian Scene 1710sHermitage MuseumHalt of the Brigands 1710sibid Landscape with Washerwomen1710-20University of Michigan Museum of ArtThe Inquisition or Interrogations in a Jail 1710-20Kunsthistorisches MuseumThe Temptation of Saint Anthony 1710-20LouvreLandscape with Shepherdsc. 1710-30São Paulo Museum of Art, São PauloPulcinella singing with Family and Lute Player1710-35Columbia Museum of Art, South CarolinaThree Camaldolite Monks at Prayer 1713-14RijksmuseumThree Capuchin Friars Meditating in their Hermitage 1713-14ibidChrist Adored by Two Nunsc. 1715AccademiaThe Sack of a City1719-25Brukenthal National Museum, Abbey of Seitenstetten, SibiuSatire of Nobleman in Misery 1719-25Detroit Institute of ArtsThe painter's workshopc. 1720Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, MadridBacchanale1720-30The Getty Center in Los AngelesTriumph of Venus1720-30ibid Interior with Monks1725Norton Simon MuseumGamblers, Soldiers and Vagabonds1720-30Staatsgalerie StuttgartSupper of Pulcinella & Colombina1725-30North Carolina Museum of Art, RaleighThe Synagogue1725-30Cleveland Museum of Art Consecration of a Franciscan Friar c. 1730El Paso Museum of Art, Texas Burial of a Franciscan Friar c. 1730El Paso Museum of ArtMonks chapter1730-1740Real Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, MadridSacrilegious Robbery 1731intended for church of Siziano, now in Quadreria Arcivescovile, MilanExorcism of the Wavesafter 1735Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New YorkLandscape with Travelers1735-1740New Orleans Museum of ArtThe Observant Friars in the Refectory1736-37Museo Civico di Bassano del GrappaFigures Before a Stormy Seaca. 1740Honolulu Museum of ArtThe Entrance to a HospitalMuzeul des Arta, BucharestLandscape with Camaldolese friarsMuseo Giannetino Luxora, Genoa The Marriage BanquetLouvrePraying MonksMuseum voor Schone Kunsten, GhentReception in a Garden Palazzo Bianco, GenoaSeashoreHermitage MuseumSupper at EmmausConvent S. Francesco in Albaro, GenoaThe Tame MagpieMetropolitan MuseumTwo Hermits in ForestLouvreA Hermit in the DesertLázaro Galdiano Museum, MadridUntitledRest of the Comedians1730sOdesa Museum of Western and Eastern Art
Notes
References Raffaello Soprani, Carlo Giuseppe Ratti (a cura di), Vite de Pittori, Scultori ed Architetti Genovesi; In questa seconda Edizione rivedute, accresciute ed arricchite di note da Carlo Giuseppe Ratti Tomo Primo, Stamperia Casamara, dalle Cinque Lampadi, con licenza de superiori, Genova, 1769. Pagine 155-164 Herman Voss, A Re-discovered Picture by Alessandro Magnasco, in The Burlington Magazine, LXXI, pp. 171–177. London 1937 A Loan Exhibition of Paintings by Alessandro Magnasco, exhibition catalogue, Durlacher Bros, New York Golden Gate International Exhibition, California Palace of Fine Arts, San Francisco, 1940 Maria Pospisil, Magnasco. Firenze 1944 Benno Geiger, Magnasco. Bergamo 1949 Antonio Morassi, Mostra del Magnasco, exhibition catalogue, Bergamo 1949 Renato Roli, Alessandro Magnasco, Milano 1964 V.Magnoni, Alessandro Magnasco, Roma 1965 Alessandro Magnasco, exhibition catalogue, Louisville-Ann Arbor, 1967 Fausta Franchini Guelfi, Alessandro Magnasco. Genova 1977
Fausta Franchini Guelfi, Alessandro Magnasco. Soncino (Cr) 1991
L.Muti - D. De Sarno Prignano, Magnasco. Faenza 1994 Alessandro Magnasco 1667-1749. Exhibition catalogue. Milano 1996 C. Geddo, Alessandro Magnasco: una fortuna critica senza confini, ibidem, pp. 39–50 Jane Turner (a cura di), The Dictionary of Art. 20, pp. 95–96. New York, Grove, 1996.
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