Landscape with a Woman and Two Soldiers
Artist/Maker
Material / Technique
Dimensionsh x w: Mått 63 x 48 cm
Inventory numberNM 211
AcqusitionTransferred 1866 from Kongl. Museum (Martelli 1804)
Other titlesTitle (sv): Landskap med en kvinna och två soldater Title (en): Landscape with a Woman and Two Soldiers
DescriptionCatalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 61: FORMER INV. NOS.: 326 (M. 1804); KM 185. TECHNICAL NOTES: The support consists of single piece of coarse, plain-weave linen fabric. The ground is red and covers the whole support. The painting is not lined. It has been mounted on a strainer with hand-forged nails, not the usual staples seen on most of the Martelli mountings. On the back of the strainer are the words “Drottningholm tillhörigt” (Belongs to Drottningholm). The varnish is yellowed and the painting is dirty but otherwise in good condition. PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804. BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 15 (as Domenichino); Sander 1872–76, p. 123, no. 326 (as Domenichino); Göthe 1887, p. 301 (as Domenichino); NM Cat. 1958, p. 236 (as anonymous, 18th century); NM Cat. 1990, p. 226 (as Pier Francesco Mola, attributed to). On the original Martelli paper label, this painting is described by Corvi and Tofanelli as a “Domenicho Zampieri. Campagna con Figure”. It is possibly identical with one of the two paintings listed under “manner of Domenichino” in Fredenheim’s catalogue and described as landscapes in which Domenichino specifically painted the figures.¹ The painting was later attributed to Mola by Ann Sutherland Harris.² In brushwork, style and composition, the painting is close to a few of Mola’s landscapes dated to the artist’s early Roman period when he fused Venetian, Bolognese and Roman influences in his work. These include for example the paintings of the prophets Elisha and Elijah in the Ringling Museum, Sarasota, which are close in size to the Nationalmuseum painting.³ Just like the present painting, these display a typical light brushwork in the detailed depiction of gnarled boughs and foliage, as well as a landscape constituted by clearly defined building blocks of shrubbery, meadows, flowers and trees, receding into the background to create a perfect feeling of perspective. Although in the Nationalmuseum painting the bushes and trees are crowded around the figures to a greater extent, we still get a glimpse of the bluish haze of the horizon, mainly to the left of the composition, but also to some degree in the centre, betraying the influence of Venetian landscape painting on Mola’s work.⁴ The figures, though without question secondary to the landscape, are rendered in the utmost detail and are of high quality, perhaps explaining the attribution of them to Domenichino, one of Mola’s masters, in Fredenheim’s catalogue. However, the woman is of a characteristic Mola type, with a bovine countenance and something of a slant to her eyes, charmingly peering at her companions while resting her arms on a rock. The companions are typical banditti or soldier types whose poses are quite similar to those found, for example, in Rosa’s Figure series or for that matter in several of Mola’s own studies, such as the drawings related to the painting of the Rest on the Flight to Egypt in the Hermitage, St Petersburg.⁵ Taken together, the traits exhibited in the rendering of both figures and landscape all point to a firm concurrence with Sutherland Harris’s attribution. dp 1 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet de Martelli (à Rome). 2 NM Archives, Dokumentationsarkivet, “Pier Francesco Mola”. 3 Cocke 1972b, pp. 19–21, 62, cat. nos. 61–62, pls. 37–38; Kahn-Rossi, ed. 1989, cat. nos. I.8–I.9. 4 Cocke 1972b, pp. 1–4, 19–21; Sutherland 1964, pp. 363–368. 5 Wallace 1979, pp. 12–36, 135–229, cat. nos. 6–88; Cocke 1972b, p. 47, cat. no. 12, pls. 114–120. [End]
Motif categoryLandscape
Collection
TechniquePainting
Object category
Keyword