Summary

Distemper on canvas, Capriccio of Antique Ruins, Italian (Bolognese) School, attributed to Pietro Paltronieri, called Il Mirandolese dalle Prospettive (1673 - Bologna 1741), 1723-48, with later additions attributed to Biagio Rebecca (1735 - 1808), 1794. An architectural capriccio with the ruins of ancient Roman buildings in a townscape, a rotunda or domed temple and Renaissance towers in the distance. The ruins feature Corinthian columns, relief panels and statuary, including an equestrian statue mounted on a pedestal at left. Classically draped figures assemble in the grounds of the ruin, seated among fragments of entablature. In the foreground at right a man dressed in a contemporary banyan robe stands, gesturing, before another who is seated and plays a lute. One of a series of eight architectural capricci in the dining-room of Shugborough Hall, inset into the walls and surrounded by gilt stucco frames attributed to Francesco Vassalli (fl. 1720-70). This picture is inset into the wall to the right of the chimneypiece. For others in the set, see NT 1271505–8, 1271510–12. The majority of the picture is attributed to Pietro Paltronieri, save for a panel added to the left of the canvas in 1794, attributed to Biagio Rebecca.

Full description

In the context of art, a capriccio (plural capricci) is an architectural fantasy picture, combining real and/or imaginary buildings in a landscape. This cycle of capricci reimagines the ruined architecture of antiquity in a fictive town, through which classical and contemporary figures roam. Different historical periods are deliberately juxtaposed, for example NT 1271510 features the remains of a colossal basilica with a gothic church in the background, while NT 1271505 shows an eighteenth-century traveller at a watering trough, before a man in classical armour. The eight capricci – which are of four different sizes – are known to have been in situ in the dining-room – then the drawing room – of Shugborough Hall by 1748, when they are mentioned in the travel journal of the Honorable Philip Yorke (1720–1790). His sister Elizabeth had married George Anson (1697-1762), younger brother of the connoisseur and collector of antique statuary Thomas Anson (1695-1773), who himself resided at Shugborough. Yorke writes: ‘from Ingestre we went to Mr Anson’s at Shugborough. He has added two Wings to his House. In one of Which is a fine Room of 38 x 24 (feet) with a large Bow Window in the middle, ornamented in Stuccoe, and with large Pictures of Architecture, Painted at Bologna’ (quoted in Godber 1968, p. 137). No artists are named, but a location of production is clearly stated. While there is no significant documentary evidence about the commissioning and attribution of the capriccio cycle, they are certainly Italian, or Italianate. Nevertheless, their traditional attribution was to the Scandinavian landscape and theatrical artist Nicholas Dall (d. 1776) who produced, in the late 1760s, decorations in the library, orangery (now demolished) as well as views of the house and grounds. Even contemporaries like William Gilpin, who saw Shugborough in 1772, ascribed them to him, writing that ‘The drawing room is hung with large ruins in distemper by Dahl [sic]’ (Gilpin cited in Laing 1993, p.228). On the basis of stylistic evidence, the attribution of the paintings to the Bolognese architectural painter Pietro Paltronieri, often called ‘Il Mirandolese’ (1673-1741), was first established by Alastair Laing in an article of 1993 (Alastair Laing, ‘O tempera, o mores!: The ruin paintings in the Dining Room at Shugborough’, Apollo, April 1993, vol. 137 pp. 227-232). In the mid-17th and 18th centuries Bologna was an important centre for theatre design and illusionistic decoration, owed largely to the prolific output of the Galli-Bibiena family of theatrical and architectural painters. In addition to Paltronieri, Laing identified the work of other artists in the cycle – a fairly common indicator of workshop practice. One of these may have been Vittorio Maria Bigari (Bologna 1692 - 1776), with whom Paltronieri collaborated on similar capricci which are today in the Museo Davia Bargellini, Bologna (see NT 1271510; Laing 1993, p. 231). Later additions were made to the two capricci either side of the chimneypiece (NT 1271508-9) when the drawing room was converted into a dining room in 1794. The Italian decorative painter Biagio Rebecca (1731-1808) was probably employed to expand both canvases, adding panels to the left side of the existing canvases and extending the design. Conservation of the capricci in 2018 resulted in the reattribution of one canvas in the cycle, NT 1271506, which had long-been considered inconsistent with the other seven (Laing 1993, p. 231). Technical analysis of paint samples taken during conservation revealed that the physical composition of the picture was different, from the application of paint layers to the brushwork, to the density of the canvas itself (Critchlow and Kukkonen Ltd., Condition Report, unpublished internal document, 2019). The architectural setting of NT 1271506 occurs, with minor variations, in three other known compositions by or attributed to the Italian view-painter Antonio Joli (1700-77), who was apprenticed to the Galli-Bibiena family of scenographic painters, and would have been familiar with work of Pietro Paltronieri (Laing 1993, p. 232, Hamilton Whatling 2020, pp. 9-10). The three works in question are each on the theme of the Massacre of the Innocents (Arisi 1986, p. 274, Toledano 2006, pp. 104-5, 107), and largely replicate, with differences in size and scale, the architecture seen in the Shugborough’s anomalous capriccio. An attribution to Joli has thus been proposed by author of the artist’s catalogue raisonné, Ralph Toledano (as the result of research conducted by Dr Jane Hamilton Whatling, 2020). Joli was a painter of stage sets in Modena, Perugia and Venice before moving, in 1744, to London, where he was employed as a scene painter at the King’s Theatre, Haymarket. He left London in 1749. The seven capricci that are ascribed to Paltronieri are his only known works in England. They were acquired – probably commissioned – by Thomas Anson in Italy, presumably during his Grand Tour (1723-5) or subsequent travels to the Levant (1734), Egypt (1740) and Europe (1748). Despite there being no archival evidence of Anson ever having visited Bologna, the size of the two largest pictures suggests that they were not produced speculatively, but rather to order. As Paltronieri died in 1741, the eighth canvas, attributable to Antonio Joli, if not painted in Italy, may instead have been produced in London. Materials Distemper is an aqueous paint, bound with a glue-size or casein (a bovine protein) binder. In the case of the Shugborough capricci, the dry pigments have been bound with glue-size, though many of the early retouchings are bound in casein. While the application of distemper directly onto plaster is not unknown in Britain, the survival of works where it has been applied to canvas is rare in England (other examples include a distemper on canvas by Spiridione Roma, c. 1770-1, at The Vyne, NT 719416, and arabesques brought to Kingston Lacy from the Palazzo Contarini, Venice, NT 1254999). This is despite the fact that it was a widely used technique within the theatre. Prior to paint application, the capricci had a ground layer applied to them, containing gypsum. Gypsum is calcium sulphate and is commonly found in grounds of paintings made in southern European countries, south of the Alps. This seems to confirm the notion that the capricci originated in Italy (Hannah Tempest, ‘Analysis of samples’, unpublished internal document, 2019). Text adapted from Dr Jane Hamilton Whatling, 'Report on Art-historical research undertaken into the Architectural Capricci at Shugborough Hall, Staffordshire, Great Britain', unpublished document, February 2020