Master of the Ligustica Academy (active in Genoa in the first half of the 17th century), Country landscape with figures

Master of the Ligustica Academy (active in Genoa in the first half of the 17th century) Country landscape with figures Oil on canvas, 76.5 x 114.3 cm With frame, 92 x 127 cm Oral communication by Camillo Manzitti The painting depicts a lively rural scene set in an open landscape: in the background, a body of lake water stretches out, flanked by trees and a ruined tower. In the middle ground, a simple and massive rural dwelling stands out, with an arched passage, laundry hanging out to dry, and figures appearing from the doorway, conveying the everyday dimension of peasant life with immediacy. The narrative heart of the painting, however, is the foreground, animated by a group of figures in colorful costumes - red, yellow, green - arranged in a choral dance, suggesting the celebration of a festival, perhaps a wedding or a seasonal event. Some figures hold hands, others observe the scene; a shepherd with his staff closes the composition on the right, while in the background other small figures move towards the lake, giving depth and breadth to the whole. The Master of the Ligustica Academy is an artistic personality still shrouded in anonymity, whose identity has been progressively outlined by the scholar Camillo Manzitti. The starting point of the reconstruction was a winter landscape belonging to the collections of the Ligustica Academy of Fine Arts in Genoa, around which a corpus of about ten works has been progressively formed, sharing a similar pictorial execution, a certain chromatic quality, and a style that betrays a close proximity to the manners of Cornelis de Wael and Jan Wildens. The critical path is still ongoing and the figure remains elusive, but stylistic comparisons allow it to be placed with reasonable certainty within the orbit of the lively Flemish community active in Genoa in the first half of the 17th century. That community had its core in the workshop of the brothers Cornelis and Lucas de Wael, who arrived in Rome and then settled in Genoa around 1619. Their residence became a real logistical base for Flemish artists traveling to the peninsula: even Antoon van Dyck stayed there in 1621. Godfried Wals, a key figure for landscape painting in the early 17th century, whose works had an extraordinary influence on Claude Lorrain, Agostino Tassi, and Filippo Napoletano, was also part of the same network of relationships. Jan Wildens, who certainly stayed in Rome and Genoa between 1613 and 1618, also contributed decisively to the formation of the local landscape taste. His work Landscape with Rest during the Flight into Egypt (private collection) testifies to the synthesis between Northern landscape painting and Southern sensibility that characterizes the entire production of this environment. It is therefore in this fertile crossroads that the personality of the Master of the Ligustica Academy matured. The affinities with de Wael are particularly stringent: the Distribution of Soup to the Poor (Palazzo Rosso, Genoa), but above all The Battle in the Village and The Seven Works of Mercy: Giving Shelter to Pilgrims — both in private collection — show the same compositional solution of the dwelling in the background and the same taste for figures animated by daily or festive gestures. The comparison strengthens the hypothesis that the author of the present painting passed through de Wael's workshop, absorbing his models and reinterpreting them with a personal touch recognizable in the softness of his touch and the luminous chromatic orchestration of the landscape.