This "Architectural Capriccio" (oil on canvas, 60 x 50 cm unframed and 70 x 60 cm framed), consists of the remains of an ancient Roman temple with smooth columns, composite capitals, and fluted pilasters, framed diagonally on the left, leaving space further ahead on the opposite side for an arch through which a landscape background is visible.
In the foreground, in the center, is a group of four figures in pairs: two women seated on the ground in mirror-image positions, and another pair standing and conversing. This is an inventive fantasy that nevertheless follows an architectural scheme found with few variations in many similar "Capricci" by Alberto Carlieri (Rome 1672 – after 1719), to whom the figurative style of these four figures also perfectly connects.
Indeed, it is one of the many similar compositions attributable to his full maturity, when this pleasant specialist in the genre, certainly the most prolific in Rome in the decades straddling the 17th and 18th centuries, had turned to primarily decorative purposes, abandoning the perspective rigor that characterized his beginnings in the footsteps of Viviano Codazzi and Giovanni Ghisolfi.
However, there is no doubt that Carlieri – whose catalog has now certainly surpassed two hundred entries – played a validly active role in this particular iconographic vein, for the modern direction he pursued, with decisive anticipations not only on Panini – many of his works were wrongly attributed to the Piacenza master – but also on specialists of a later generation, such as Joli and Battaglioli.
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Dr. Riccardo Moneghini
Art Historian
