Period: 17th century
SOLD I bring to your attention this important pair of "Architectural Capriccios" (oil paintings on canvas, 87 x 50 cm), as they constitute a significant new acquisition to the catalog of Piero Francesco Garola (Turin 1638 - Rome 1716), confirming the varied personality of this eclectic artist who gained prominence in this genre, immediately after Ghisolfi and before the rise of Panini, who certainly had the opportunity to draw profitable benefit from his works for his resounding success, which manifested itself at the end of the second decade of the eighteenth century. These two "Capriccios" - one with a large sepulchral sarcophagus on a base with sculpted figures, followed by a pyramid and in the background a series of round arches interspersed with a column, and the other with a bizarre agglomeration of ruins, including a large vase, piled up in the atrium of a temple on fluted composite columns with the already disjointed and vegetation-invaded architrave - attest to the almost certain relationship between the two painters, one from Turin and the other from Piacenza, who moved to Rome in the penultimate decade of the seventeenth century and the other in the first of the following. The paternity of Garola is clearly proven by the confirmation of one of the aspects of his versatile inventive profile that allowed him to express subjects ranging from the clear representations of interiors of Christian basilicas - his pair with the Interior of St. Peter's and the Interior of St. Paul's constituted a sort of business card for his insertion in the Roman context - to the more free and pure "capriccios" in the wake of Ghisolfi, finding explanatory terms of comparison in various examples illustrated in my recent publication Il Capriccio architettonico in Italia nel XVII e XVIII secolo (etgraphiae ed., Foligno 2015, II, pp. 62-81, figs. 2 a-b, 9, lO, 17 a-b and 22), from whose examination the common paternity of the pair here examined also emerges. The activity of Garola, requested by the Roman aristocracy, from the Spada to the Pallavicini, and professor of perspective at the Accademia di San Luca, ranged from the aforementioned "Interiors of churches" to views mostly of fantasy but not infrequently with realistic connections, to "capriccios" of pure fantasy, in which he set mythological subjects or only generic figurative insertions, as in the significant present pair. The work, like all our objects, is sold with a photographic certificate FIMA of authenticity and legitimate origin; this document identifies the object providing added value to the article. We personally take care of and organize the packaging and shipping of works of art with insurance worldwide. Dr. Riccardo Moneghini Expert in ancient painting - court expert