Gaetano Ottani (1720 - 1724 / 1801) Pair of paintings depicting Landscapes with ruins and figures Measurements: canvases cm W 82 x H 66; with frames cm W 98 x H 82 x D 6 Price: confidential negotiation Objects accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and expertise (downloadable at the bottom of the page) The two fine paintings, executed in oil on canvas, depict landscapes with architectural capriccios animated by several figures. The architectural capriccio, an artistic genre that emerged in Italian painting from the 17th century onwards, is characterized by the representation of fantastic architectures or perspective inventions, sometimes combined with elements freely drawn from reality. In the works we observe large arches, colonnades and friezes fallen into ruin, placed in perspective in order to create greater depth, inhabited by spontaneous vegetation that partly covers the summit. Around other architectural elements of classical taste, such as sarcophagi and vases, stir and balance the composition. Verdure tinge the ground, which fades into plains on the horizon with some small and distant buildings, while some rocky mountains are lost in the distance, creating a scenographic backdrop that emphasizes and amplifies the effect of the perspective vanishing line of the buildings. Some figures of gentlemen who engage in conversations, accompanied by a dog, other wayfarers and characters from rural life animate the composition. A remarkable pictorial quality is evident with which the artist traces the characters and ruins and a luminous and well-balanced color scheme, played on delicate tones and in harmony with each other. Stylistically, the works can certainly be attributed to the Bolognese painter Gaetano Ottani (Bologna, 1708 – Turin, 1801). Gaetano Ottani was born in Bologna in 1708. Unfortunately, a monographic study on the artist is still lacking. The date of death, still mistakenly indicated by many as 1808, is instead January 14, 1801, when the artist was 92 years old. He was therefore born in 1708, and not in 1720-24 as many report (for the registration of the death certificate at the Municipality of Turin, cf. Historical Archive of the Municipality of Turin, Headings of Death Certificates, vol. 37: Thursday, January 15, 1801 “Gaetano Ottani - 92 - old age - S. Filippo”. Ottani's death certificate, cited by San Martino, is kept among the documents of the parish of San Filippo di Torino). Ottani trained in his native city, studying at the Clementine Academy. He had a complex career as a set designer, as a painter and as a tenor, highly appreciated at the Italian level. He devoted himself mainly to easel painting, and in particular to the genre of capriccio, often with views of ruins and fantasy seascapes rich in details, nocturnal visions on colonnades. He first took as an example Pietro Paltronieri, the Mirandolese; the study of the artists encountered during the trips undertaken as an opera singer must have contributed to the maturation of his style. He was very influenced by the ways of the great set designer Ferdinando Galli Bibiena. Tenor, and therefore in the system of voices of the drama for music of the mid-eighteenth century predestined to the parts of sovereign and parent, he always sang only in opera seria. Diego Tufarelli, impresario at the S. Carlo in those years, had hired Ottani considering him the tenor «most accredited that is heard today, [...] new musician, well done and very virtuous» (Croce, 1891, p. 436). In Bologna, during his studies, Ottani met the Piedmontese painter Carlo Filippo Alberti, a Turin artist, specialist in architectural compositions and scenography at the Savoy court, and with him came to Turin to work in 1749. He then served for the court as a painter and singer. In the Savoy capital, in 1770, he met Charles Burney, who praised in him both the mastery of the technical and expressive means of a singer and the skill of a painter. As a painter, Gaetano received numerous commissions from the Savoy court for the decoration of villas and palaces in the Turin area. His style is characterized by a sign of sketch-like immediacy, accompanied by a narrative sense of Venetian origin; his inventions are expressed in elaborate architectures in classical or Gothic style of markedly scenographic taste. On October 7, 1766 he was admitted to the Clementine Academy of Bologna. In 1770 he was a member of the Academy of Fine Arts in Verona; in 1773 he was aggregated as an honorary academic in that of Parma. In the same year he signed himself «virtuoso of painting and music of the emi. Sign. Cardinal Alessandro Albani», famous collector and pro-Piedmontese diplomat. In Turin he was a member of the Company of St. Luke, of which he was prior in 1782. From 1774 he was in the service of Vittorio Amedeo III, who ascended the throne the previous year. With the advent of the Neoclassical taste the interest in the picturesque landscape of which he was a specialist waned and in the last decade he gradually thinned the activity. In 1800 the sources describe him «sick and poor» (Moffa, 1990, p. 87); he died in Turin at the beginning of 1801. In the canvases object of this study we find many of the stylistic characters of Gaetano Ottani and there are also some details very close to other signed works or considered autograph by critics. Carlotta Venegoni

Period: Second half of the 18th century

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