Francesco Zuccarelli was born in Tuscany but spent much of his early career in Venice before travelling to London in 1752; he was elected a founder member of the Royal Academy in 1768. Zuccarelli’s sprightly arcadian landscapes hugely appealed to British taste and it was probably at the urging of Joseph Smith, the British consul in Venice, that he made the journey to Britain. In Britain Zuccarelli found considerable success, his landscapes became a staple of major British collections from leading magnates such as Hugh Smythson, 1st Duke of Northumberland, who employed Zuccarelli to decorate the long gallery at Syon, to King George III himself, who commissioned a number of spectacular landscapes from the artist. Zuccarelli’s professional success ensured that it was at the centre of artistic London. Dating Zuccarelli’s landscape drawings is difficult, but it seems likely that they predominately date from early in his time in London.
The present characteristic example encapsulates Zuccarelli’s landscape technique. The scene, worked in brown ink and white heightening on buff coloured paper, shows a shepherd accompanying a mounted woman passing a group of wayside figures including two kneeling pilgrims. Zuccarelli designed the composition – with the motif of a mounted woman, accompanied by a walking man- specifically to evoke the Flight into Egypt, but presumably conscious of the Protestant, British market without the overt Biblical narrative. Zuccarelli’s highly finished, vigorously worked drawing was made in the tradition of Italianate landscape capricci pioneered by the Venetian artist Marco Ricci. Zuccarelli populates the landscape with classical buildings – a circular temple, reminiscent of the Temple of Vesta at Tivoli, a fragment of Roman aqueduct – along with a picturesque waterfall and lake.
Zuccarelli completed a painting combining similar motifs for his most important early patron, Joseph Smith, a composition that was engraved by the young Francesco Bartolozzi and published by Giuseppe Wagner. Joseph Smith was a key figure for British travellers, both Grand Tourists and artists. The painter Richard Wilson arrived in Venice in 1751 noting in a letter home that ‘Mr Smith our Consul here is exceedingly kind to me’, it was probably through Smith that he met Zuccarelli. Wilson reported that he was ‘a famous Painter of this place made me an Offer of his painting me a picture for a portrait of himself wch I am doing with great pleasure.’[1] Zuccarelli, in turn, encouraged Wilson to pursue a career as a landscape painter. Zuccarelli’s influence is immediately discernible in Wilson’s palette, compositions and his interest in capturing light effects. Joshua Reynolds arrived in Venice in Spring 1752, with a note of introduction to Zuccarelli from Wilson, recording their conversation about the technique of old master painters: ‘Zuccarellis says Paulo [Veronese] and Tintoret painted on a Gess[o] ground. He does not think Titian did.’ Encouraged by these conversations, Zuccarelli left Venice for London later the same year.
In London Zuccarelli achieved considerable success. He developed a highly commercial mode of landscape painting which combined motifs of rural figures with a light filled Italianate topography. Often generically arcadian, rather than representing a specific narrative or place, Zuccarelli’s works appealed to British collectors who prized the classical landscapes of Claude almost above all else. As a result, Zuccarelli’s paintings could be found as the only ‘modern’ works hanging amidst collections of notable old masters, for example in the Green State Bedroom at Holkham Hall or hanging in Robert Adam designed frames in the Dining Room of Kedleston Hall. Zuccarelli’s relationship with Adam meant that his landscapes were regularly incorporated into his most prestigious interiors, for example as lunettes in the gallery at Syon House.
Francesco Bartolozzi after Francesco Zuccarelli
Dà l'esca un picciol rivo a sobria mensa.
Etching
13 x 17 ½ inches; 338 x 445 mm
1762
© The Trustees of the British Museum
