Landscape with Tobias and the Angel
Andrea Locatelli (Rome 1695 – Rome 1741?)
Category
Art / Oil paintings
Date
1715 - 1740
Materials
Oil on canvas
Measurements
1194 x 1702 mm (47 x 67 in)
Order this imageCollection
Hinton Ampner, Hampshire
NT 1530070
Caption
This is an example of Locatelli’s large landscapes and of outstanding quality. It has been suggested that the figures were added by another artist, like Giaquinto, but this is unlikely even though they show his influence and that of Pompeo Batoni. The biblical story depicted is from the Apochryphal Book of Tobit. Tobias goes on a journey from Nineveh to Media, to collect money at the behest of his blind father who was fearful of his own imminent death. He is accompanied by the archangel Raphael (who, according to the story, did not actually reveal himself as such until the end of the journey). He catches a fish in the River Tigris whose entrails cure his future wife’s madness as well as Tobit’s blindness.
Summary
Oil painting on canvas, Landscape with Tobias and the Angel by Andrea Locatelli (Rome 1695 – Rome 1741?) and possibly Pietro Bianchi (Rome 1694 - Rome 1740) for the figures. Tobias and the Angel in a wooded river landscape. Locatelli is essentially a landscape painter; it used to be thought that the figures in this picture must be by another hand such as Sebastiano Conca or Carrado Giaquinto, but they are in fact of a quality that he himself was quite capable of attaining. The angel is telling Tobias that the gall-bladder of the miraculously-caught fish will cure his father's blindness.
Provenance
Perhaps in the Liectenstein collection, Vienna; Count Hardenberg, Darmstadt, Julius Böhler Gallery, Munich; Pospisil collection, Venice; acquired for £900 by Ralph Dutton in Venice in 1960; bequeathed by Ralph Dutton, 8th Lord Sherborne (1898–1985)
Credit line
Hinton Ampner, The Ralph Dutton Collection (National Trust)
Makers and roles
Andrea Locatelli (Rome 1695 – Rome 1741?), artist Andrea Locatelli (Rome 1695 – Rome 1741?) and Pietro Bianchi (Rome 1694 - Rome 1740), artist previously catalogued as attributed to Andrea Locatelli (Rome 1695 – Rome 1741?) and Sebastiano Conca (Gaeta 1680 - Naples 1764), artist Pietro Bianchi (Rome 1694 – Rome 1740), artist previously catalogued as attributed to Sebastiano Conca (Gaeta 1680 – Naples 1764), artist
References
Vici 1976 Andrea Busiri Vici (trans. Stella Rudolph), Andrea Locatelli and Roman Landscape Painting of the Eighteenth Century, Rome, 1976, no. 65