Description
Marco Ricci (Belluno 1676 – Venice 1730) – Idyllic Landscape with River and Mill.
Oil on canvas, in carved and gilded wooden frame.
Expert opinion: Prof. Bernard Aikema (critical essay enclosed).
Marco Ricci, nephew of the figure painter Sebastiano Ricci, is among the leading landscape painters of early eighteenth-century Venice, active between Venice and England. His output includes oils and temperas depicting rural scenes in a pre-Alpine setting, clearly reminiscent of the Belluno region where he was born. As Prof. Aikema observes, the painting presents an idyllic rural scene: from the tree screen on the left, the composition unfolds toward the bridge over the river, the village with its mill, and the sturdy square tower dominating the background. Along the banks, small figures are engaged in washing or simply resting, with distant mountains closing the scene. The recurring elements — the group of trees, the bridge, the square tower — appear regularly throughout Ricci’s production and find direct comparison, in both dimensions and composition, with a tempera in a private Trevisan collection (A. Scarpa Sonino, Marco Ricci, Milan 1991, pp. 228-229, cat. 43), datable to the artist’s full maturity, between the late second and early third decade of the eighteenth century.
Condition report: Relined canvas. Good overall state of conservation of the pictorial surface.
