Large Italian Baroque landscape Ancient Roman Ruins 18th century Capriccio ^Sale

Signed monogram: "MR", on the round column fragment. Attributed Marco Ricci (1676 – 1730) was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. In Marco's ruin paintings, whether in oil or tempera, the same motifs, ruins and sculptures reappear. They are populated by contemporary characters going about their everyday lives, on a small scale compared to their surroundings. In the central part of this large panoramic painting, ruins of an ancient temple with several sculptures and figures of people. In the distance rises the cathedral, in form resembling the church of St. Petra in Rome. Such paintings, as a reminder to contemporaries of the insignificance of all earthly. The once great structures and creations of man are destroyed and turned into dust, under the influence of time and circumstances. Antique oil painting on wood panel, signed, framed.
Size app.: 45 x 137 cm (roughly 17.7 x 53.9 in), frame 62 x 156.5 cm (roughly 24.5 x 61.6 in). Good condition, age wear, cleaning, losses to frame. Please study good resolution images for precise cosmetic condition. In person actual painting may appear darker or brighter than in our pictures, strictly depending on sufficient light in your environment. Weight of app. 11 kg isgoing to measure some 15 kg packed for shipment.
Marco Ricci was born at Belluno and received his first instruction in art from his uncle, Sebastiano Ricci, likely in Milan in 1694–6. He left for Venice with his uncle in 1696, but had to flee the city after killing a gondolier. He visited Rome, where he was for some time occupied in painting perspective views. In 1706–7, he worked with his uncle on the decoration of the Sala d'Ercole in the Palazzo Fenzi, located in Florence. Ricci's propensity for collaboration with other artists makes his early style difficult to trace, but it is generally agreed that his influences included Claude Lorrain, Gaspard Dughet, and Salvator Rosa, along with a naturalistic style of landscape painting practiced in the Veneto in the 17th and early 18th centuries. Closer in time, and known personally by Ricci, was the Genoese painter Alessandro Magnasco, whose handling of loose paint and his long, thin, wiry figures are echoed in a number of Ricci's early canvases.