Michelangelo Cerquozzi and Angeluccio

Private collection, Trier, by the early 18th century;

By descent in the family;

By whom sold, Cologne, Van Ham Kunstauktionen, 8 April 2006, lot 1561, for €125,000 (as Michelangelo Cerquozzi and the landscape attributed to Angeluccio);

With David Wade Fine Art, Yorkshire;

Where acquired.

This colourful landscape is an interesting example of a collaborative work between two painters based in Rome in the mid-17th century.

Michelangelo Cerquozzi was a leading member of the Bamboccianti: a group of predominantly foreign artists active in the Eternal City, who worked in the manner of Pieter van Laer (1599–1642), called il Bamboccio, producing small works that focused on contemporary Italian street-life. Cerquozzi's most accomplished pictures blend the naturalism of the Bamboccianti with strong narrative or anecdotal characteristics, exemplified here by the comedic element of the dog crouching in the foreground.

Angeluccio is a more enigmatic artist by comparison, whose real name, nationality and dates are unknown to us today. He is recorded, however, as a student of Claude Lorrain (1600–1682): the biographer Pascoli mentions him in 1730, noting that: 'Claude only had one well-known student, Angeluccio, who died young and could do little work.'¹ The staffage in his pictures was usually executed by Cerquozzi, as in the present example, or else by Jan Miel (1599–1664). Interestingly, Angeluccio was also known as a draughtsman of plant studies. One of his sheets in the Kupferstichkabinett, Staatliche Museen, Berlin, may have been used as a preliminary study for the lower left quadrant of this painting.²

¹ M. Roethlisberger (ed.), Im Licht von Claude Lorrain. Landschaftsmalerei aus drei Jahrhunderten, exh. cat., Munich 1983, p. 154.

² Inv. no. KdZ 14894; black pen and brush in white on blue paper, 26.3 x 41.3 cm.; M. Roethlisberger, ‘Drawings by Angeluccio (= Drawings around Claude II), Master Drawings, IV, 1966, pp. 378–79, 381, no. 3, reproduced fig. 3.