Pair of Seascapes - Francesco Fidanza ( 1747 - 1819 )

Pair of paintings, oil on canvas, measuring 80 x 100 cm without frame and 90 x 110 cm with coeval frame, depicting a stormy navy and a navy at dawn by the painter Francesco Fidanza (Rome 1747 - Milan 119).

Further reinforcing this thesis on Fidanza's skilful painting skills are the characteristics of the pictorial rendering of these paintings, in the skilful use of a very luminous material, in the peremptory break between the areas in light and those in shadow, in the execution of the lively figures that populate the theatrical scaffolding and in the rendering of the rosy clouds.

The main characteristics of Fidanza's painting are the airy breadth of the landscapes and the sense of diffuse luminosity that are reminiscent of an almost neo-classical painting.

The motif of the landscape, even in the most imaginative settings, always has a real cue in Fidanza's work and therefore a real and human dimension; in these paintings we can see the blacks and greys so bright and vivid that they try to explain to us how the force of nature around us is enormous with that window where the rainbow is coming and in which we lose ourselves; in the same way we see in the second navy how beautiful, strong, vigorous but at the same time gentle and docile the sea and nature itself is.

In our stormy sea with a landscape on the left we have a boat, in great difficulty, ready to run aground, while the sailors, who have already dived into the lifeboat, are trying to save themselves on the reef.

Here we can see Fidanza's skilful pictorial strength both in the perspective construction of the navy in the storm with a clever interplay of positions, and in the delicate representation of the landscape with a very articulate depiction with a special mention for the water crashing against the reef.

We are confronted with a sensational storm scene in which the ships and the boat are now at the mercy of the wind and especially the sea; the effects of light create a visual drama in the marriage of the darkness of the sea and in particular the majesty of its waves and lightning with the dynamic and expressive force of the storm clouds.

The second work is an airy “Landscape” at dawn with numerous boats ready to leave and a few characters enjoying the sea breeze and the colours of dawn on the cliffs.

The Arcadian interpretation of nature, with a refined imprint and at the same time with a more instinctive and less constructed inventiveness, close to the most genuinely rural and pictorially full-bodied visions, approaching an almost zuccarellian work, is one of Fidanza's main characteristics.