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Bucolic Landscape with Travellers, Livestock, and a Shepherd Dog – oil on canvas, Venetian school, 18th century
(78 x 64 cm – excluding frame)
An oil on canvas painting from the Venetian school, dating to the 18th century, depicting a pastoral scene set within a serene and luminous rural landscape.
In terms of style, atmosphere, and compositional structure, the work can be attributed to the circle of Antonio Diziani (Venice, 1737–1797), a painter renowned for his ability to transform nature into elegant, harmonious, and evocative images.
The scene features a river crossed by a rustic bridge, framed by rural architecture and soft, flowing vegetation. In the foreground, a group of travellers, accompanied by a horse and a small shepherd dog, proceed along a country path. Nearby, a few sheep appear, introducing a direct reference to country life. The composition does not aim for strict realism but rather offers an idealised and poetic vision of the countryside—herein lies the painting’s bucolic character.
The term bucolic refers to the ideal of Arcadia, a concept rooted in ancient poetry and embraced in the 17th and 18th centuries as a symbol of simplicity, beauty, and harmony with nature. In painting, as in this case, it translates into luminous, ordered landscapes, populated by figures who move quietly within the grace of the natural world.
The soft light, warm tones, and delicate transitions are consistent with the visual language of Diziani and his circle, also influenced by the Northern European tradition.
The painting is entirely original and has been expertly restored. It has undergone careful cleaning, re-lining, and has been mounted on a new stretcher with tensioning keys, a system that ensures the canvas remains well-stretched over time, preserving its structural stability and aesthetic presentation.
It is presented in a fine 19th-century carved and gilded wooden frame, not original to the piece but stylistically in harmony with it.
A highly evocative work, an expression of refined and sensitive taste, capable of transporting the viewer into a quiet dimension of light, peace, and rural memory—a gentle invitation to calm and to the beauty of simple things, all the more valuable today, against the backdrop of everyday noise and haste.
- Material: oil on canvas
- Size: cm 90 x 119 inclusa cornice
- Condition: Restored
- Period: Seconda metà del '700
- State: Optimal conditions
