Description
Giuseppe Zais (Forno di Canale 1709 – Treviso 1784) – Battle on Horseback.
Oil on canvas, in carved and gilded wooden frame.
Giuseppe Zais is among the most celebrated landscape painters of the eighteenth-century Venetian school, known for his bucolic scenes populated by stylised figures of shepherds and washerwomen set within idyllic rural landscapes. He trained in Venice, where he studied the works of Marco Ricci, from whom he drew clear inspiration for his handling of landscape and figures.
The present cavalry battle represents a rare unicum within the artist’s output, who seldom engaged with military subjects. The work reveals an unexpected command of the genre, with a dynamic composition and a darker, more dramatic palette than his customary pastoral scenes, recalling the tradition of battle painting of Flemish and Dutch derivation widespread in eighteenth-century Venice.
The painting depicts the scene in full swing, with an officer on a white horse at the centre dominating the fray, surrounded by infantry and horsemen in combat. In the background a fortress on a rocky spur rises against a stormy sky — a landscape passage that closely recalls the construction of the artist’s better-known works, revealing the same loose, textured brushwork.
Condition report: Relined canvas. Good state of conservation of the pictorial surface.
