Where did Alessandro Magnasco work between Apr 1688 and May 1702?
Alessandro Magnasco 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 . Magnascos distinctive style is characterized by fragmented forms rendered with swift brushstrokes and darting flashes of light . 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 ) 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 . 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 . 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 . 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 Salvatore Rosas romantic sea-lashed landscapes , and his affinity for paintings of brigands . The diminutive scale of Magnascos figures relative to the landscape is comparable to Claude Lorraines more airy depictions . While his use of figures of ragged beggars has been compared with Giuseppe Maria Crespis genre style , Crespis 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 . Magnascos 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 . 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 .