A capriccio with figures in a landscape; and a companion painting

Antonio Francesco Peruzzini, a little-known landscape painter from Ancona, was essentially unstudied until the 1960s when Giuseppe Maria Pilo, Mina Gregori and Marco Chiarini - and later Giuliana Biavati and Fausta Franchini Guelfi - began to look more closely at his extant works, many of which were collaborative efforts with other artists including Magnasco and Ricci. Peruzzini likely spent time in Rome circa 1672-4 with his brother Giovanni, also a painter, and there became aware of the work of Salvator Rosa and of Northern landscape painters working in Italy, such as Mathieu Plattenberg and Pieter Mulier. Peruzzini was particularly influential on the development of Marco Ricci, who probably saw examples his work in the Ranuzzi or Borghese collections.

Although Peruzzini often worked with other artists who painted the staffage in his landscapes, the present pair, datable to the height of the artist's career, is considered to be entirely autograph. Peruzzini's spiky, staccato handling of the paint is immediately recognizable, as is his palette, comprised primarily of vibrant hues of cerulean blue, mossy green and warm brown. Peruzzini's brushwork is supremely active, and the evidence of the artist's hand remains clearly present. Both paintings in the present pair describe small villages in an expansive landscape setting, with the distant mountain peaks that were one of the artist's hallmarks.