M arco R icci
Belluno 1676 - Venice 1730
8. An extensive landscape with herdsmen in the left foreground
Gouache on paper
293 x 441 mm
Painter and etcher. He was the nephew and pupil of Sebastiano Ricci, with whom he collaborated in the painting
of landscapes in Florence in 1706-07 and numerous occasions thereafter. He probably went toRome and also
to Milan, where an encounter with Magnasco was of particular importance. From 1708 to 1710 he worked in
England as a scenographer together with Pellegrini, and again from 1712 to 1716 with Sebastiano Ricci. On his
return trip to Venice, passing through Flanders and the Low Countries, he visited Paris. Marco Ricci renewed
Venetian landscapes painting just as Sebastiano Ricci had renewed Venetian history painting. Essential to Marco’s
art was the example of Titian, with whom he had in common the direct visual experience of the landscape of the
region of Cadore. Also important was the influence of the works of Salvator Rosa, Dughet, and Pieter Mulier
(Tempesta), and Luca Carlevaris’Venetian - Roman topographical views and paintings of ruins. In his romantic
landscapes Marco Ricci was the precursor of Piranesi. Ricci began to etch in 1723, but more numerous are
the etchings made by others after his designs. Giuseppe Zais was his pupil and direct follower, and Zuccarelli,
Canaletto, and Guardi all felt his influence.The greater part of his drawings, about three hundred, are at Windsor
Castle. Like the Windsor collection of Sebastiano’s drawings they came from Joseph Smith, the English Consul
in Venice.
The art of landscape took two forms in the eighteenth century rebirth of Venetian painting, the veduta and the
picturesque landscape. In the second of these, the important figure is Marco Ricci, the nephew andassistant of
Sebastiano. The two strongest influences upon his art were Salvator Rosa and his own contemporary Alessandro
Magnasco. Ricci’s favourite subjects were in the hills around his native place, Belluno, where the Adige comes out
through the foothills of the Alps; subjects which were traditional in Venice (for Titian’s landscapes are based on
this region) but treated with a mood and nervous touch that are new.
( GG )