Italian school; XVIII century.

Italian school; XVIII century.
"Landscape with classical ruins".
Oil on panel.
Presents label on the back.
It has frame of the eighteenth century.
Measurements: 28 x 38 cm; 37 x 48 cm (frame).
In this painting the author follows the models established in the XVII century by Poussin and Lorena, monumental landscapes, of totally classicist aesthetics, starred by monumental classical buildings, to which here the romantic concept of the ruin is added. The piece presents on the back an old attribution to Pieter Boel (Antwerp, 1622 - Paris, 1674), who specialized in painting still lifes of hunting.
The genre of the landscape view with ruins or classical monuments, real or invented, enjoyed great success from the nineteenth century, especially as a result of Romanticism. The taste for the artistic remains of the past, the generalization of travel by writers and artists in search of monuments and works of art that would serve as a source of inspiration, and the discovery of important ancient remains such as those of the cities of Pompeii and Herculaneum undoubtedly contributed to the success of the genre. It is a pictorial genre, moreover, that has its roots in the seventeenth century, in the veduta, not always topographical, but sometimes extremely imaginative, of artists such as Canaletto and others. During Romanticism, the ruin was the most evocative and real representation of the past. While in France theories such as those of Viollet le Duc advocated a historical reconstruction of ruined buildings, England defended the supremacy of the ruin, this English theory had its maximum representative in the figure of the scholar John Ruskin who in his work The Stones of Venice reflects his aesthetic ideas regarding the ruins.