Lot 128: , An elegant company on a classical terrace, a view of a church and a cemetery beyond

oil on canvas

measurements note 108.5 by 96.3 cm.; 42 3/4 by 38 in.

We are grateful to Prof. Lino Moretti for recognising that the present painting is a collaborative work between Francesco Battaglioli and Francesco Zugno. Battaglioli was born in Modena and apart from a trip to Spain between 1756 and 1760 he worked for much of his life in and around Venice. In 1772 he became a member of the Venice Arts Academy, of which Zugno had been co-founder in 1755, and in 1778/9 he replaced Antonio Visentini in teaching architecture there (and did so for ten years). The two artists are known to have collaborated from around 1760, Battaglioli providing the architectural or landscape settings and Zugno the figures. As early as 1785 a catalogue of the collection of Maffeo Pinelli records an architectural capriccio with figures by Zugno, and this formed the basis of Voss? study of the two artists? collaboration some 150 years later. 1 These paintings, in which Zugno?s Tiepolesque figures are scattered throughout Battaglioli?s perspectival views, usually formed part of a series of decorative capricci . Two such examples, almost certainly datable to around the same time as the present work and showing piazze with figures conversing and dancing, are in the Hermitage, St. Petersburg, and a third from the same series is in the Pushkin Museum, Moscow: all three once adorned the Palazzo Mocenigo in Padua. 2 1 Catalogo dei quadri raccolti dal fu Signor Maffeo Pinelli , Venice 1785, p. 7, a painting by Battaglioli is described as ? Architettura bellissima colle figure di Francesco Zugno e con un giardino indietro ?. H. Voss, ?Studien zur venezianischen vedutenmalerei des 18 Jahrhundert?, in V Repertorium für Kunstwissenschaft , 1926, pp. 37-40. For a more recent study of the two artists see R. Pallucchini, La Pittura nel Veneto. Il Settecento , vol. II, Milan 1996, pp. 202-9, and pp. 423-28. 2 For the two Hermitage paintings see T.D. Fomichova, The Hermitage, Catalogue of Western European Painting. Venetian Painting, Fourteenth to Eighteenth Centuries , Florence 1992, pp. 71-2, cat. nos. 37 and 38, both reproduced.