Antonio JOLI di DIPI (Modena 1700 – 1777 Naples)
Around 1754-1761
Arcadian landscape with ruins and figures
Oil on canvas, 62 x 85 cm
PROVENANCE
- Private collection Germany since 1980 and until September 2024, like Pierre-Antoine PATEL
THE ARTIST
Trained in Modena, Antonio Joli worked for a time in Rome for a member of the Galli-Bibiena family and for Giovanni Paolo Panini. After stays in Modena and Perugia, he moved to Venice in 1736, where he came into contact with Canaletto. Although he settled in Naples, Joli travelled extensively in Europe and was often found in Venice, where he married in 1740. In 1742, he worked with Giuseppe Bibbiena on the design of a theatre. From 1744 to 1748 he was in London. In 1754, he visited Venice again on his return from Spain. Two years later, he was appointed a founding member of the Venetian Academy.
THE WORK
The present painting is likely to be part of an important series of views commissioned by Lord Brudenell, himself the subject of portraits by Batoni and Mengs, as part of a series showing the towns he had visited on the Grand Tour. Joli led an itinerant career as a painter of decorative frescoes and theatre sets, capricci and veduti. He worked in London from 1744 to 1748, where he executed designs for Chesterfield House and Richmond House, adjoining Montagu House, which Brudenell's mother inherited. In the 1750s, he worked again in Italy. After a visit to Naples, he was in Venice in October 1754, Naples in 1729 and Venice again in 1760. His travels intersected on several occasions with those of Lord Brudenell, who may have employed him as early as 1754. Like Vanvitelli at the turn of the century, Joli had travelled more widely than most other Italian topographical painters. He was therefore able to provide views not only of Naples, but also of many of the other cities visited by Brudenell.
Of the sixteen paintings of a format close to the one we are presenting, the one preserved at Beaulieu and representing a View of St Rémy (fig.1) in the south of France is to be compared with our painting. Eight represent Naples and two Messina, while Agrigento, Palermo, Malta, Florence, Tarascon and Avignon, which Brudenell probably saw on his way to Genoa in 1754, are represented by isolated views. Twelve were sold at Christie's in 1958. These were views of San Remy, Naples, Ischia, Messina, Marsala, Catania, Syracuse (two), Trapani, Venice and Stra (two) (Christie's, London, 2 May 1958, lots 43-51) - and three in 1973, views of Agrigento, Palermo and Messina (Christie's, London, 11 April 1975, lots 60-62). Eight others have been conserved at Bowhill: pairs of views of Naples during Carnival and of the Bay of Naples, Paestum, Agrigento and Pola. During his stay in Naples, Brudenell also commissioned Carlo Bonavia's large moonlit view of Vesuvius, dated 1757 and now in Beaulieu. The counterpart to the painting of St Rémy, a Neapolitan coastal scene in the manner of Vernet, is at Bowhill.
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