Francesco Simonini (Parma, 1686 – Venezia, 1735)... Lot n° 116

This mixed media on paper is a fine example of a preparatory sketch by an important early 18th-century Venetian battle painter. Francesco Simonini was born and trained in Parma in the workshop of Francesco Monti known as Brescianino delle Battaglie, but the constructions of his compositions were also influenced by the broad views crowded with battles between knights of Ilario Mercanti, known as lo Spolverini.He settled in Venice and there became the most famous representative of the genre, earning such notable commissions as those from one of the best-known collectors of contemporary Venetian painting, Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg.The painter also spent some years between Florence, Rome and Bologna, before moving to Venice where he worked for other important patrons: the Piccolomini in Florence, Cardinal Ruffo in Bologna and various knights and cardinals in Rome. To understand to which phase of his production this drawing belongs is not an easy task: what we can say with certainty, however, is that it is a piece of great quality that, alongside the vagueness of the landscape and the architecture of the background, alternates the precise, vibrant, nervous, strongly expressive drawing; characteristics that we also find in his pictorial production. Bibl.: G. Sestieri, I pittori di battaglie, Italian and foreign masters of the 17th and 18th centuries, Rome 1999, pp. 456-479. Ink and watercolor on paper, cm est. 63x92, int. 40X69.5