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Lot Essay
The leading topographical painter of his generation, Carlo Bossoli travelled extensively around Europe, North Africa and the Ottoman Empire. He first visited Constantinople in 1839 on his way back from Odessa, and the city became a regular staging post for him on the regular journeys he made between Italy and the Crimea in the early 1840s.
Bossoli was famed for an extraordinary sense of place, rendered through an ability to brilliantly convey local colour, and a highly refined sense of draftsmanship. He brought these skills to bear in panoramic vedute of Europe's major cities, executed both as commissions for the local nobility and often as illustrations for periodicals such as the English Illustrated London News. Many of his views were also reproduced as prints.
The fusion of topographical and capriccio landscape elements in these two lively views of Constantinople is characteristic of Bossoli's style before 1850, and at least one other smaller variant of these compositions is known (fig. 1). These earlier paintings are different to the more illustrative compositions Bossoli rendered of Constantinople (fig. 2) and other cities in his later career, and hark back instead to the vedute paintings of Venetian artists such as Francesco Guardi. While the overall topography is accurate and elements such as the modern shipping visible in the background anchor the views in time, Bossoli has sought above all to stress the exotic and picturesque nature of the scenes he is describing: the palette is rendered in a heightened key, the scale of the foreground figures and height of the Galata tower are exaggerated and the skyline is liberally dotted with minarets.
Both canvases share a similar compositional structure, with a strong opposition between foreground and background planes. These are linked in one picture by a cypress lined avenue, and by the opening out past the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmara in the other, both of which serve to create a sense of depth. The setting is enlived by Bossoli's characteristic use of staffage, also reminiscent of Guardi and Canaletto, dotted with brightly dressed figures who serve to convey the hustle and bustle of everyday life. In one composition a group of figures stand chatting and drinking by a large fountain on the left; a pair of men stand in greeting while others ask for directions. In the second a group of women huddle in conversation below a fountain, balanced by the group of men, smoking and conversing under an awning on the other side. These little vignettes, rendered with careful attention to detail and in bright, colourful tones, combine to create pictures that are full of life and breathe the atmosphere of Constantinople.
The authenticity of these paintings has been confirmed in a letter by Dott. Cav. Arabella Cifani.
Bossoli was famed for an extraordinary sense of place, rendered through an ability to brilliantly convey local colour, and a highly refined sense of draftsmanship. He brought these skills to bear in panoramic vedute of Europe's major cities, executed both as commissions for the local nobility and often as illustrations for periodicals such as the English Illustrated London News. Many of his views were also reproduced as prints.
The fusion of topographical and capriccio landscape elements in these two lively views of Constantinople is characteristic of Bossoli's style before 1850, and at least one other smaller variant of these compositions is known (fig. 1). These earlier paintings are different to the more illustrative compositions Bossoli rendered of Constantinople (fig. 2) and other cities in his later career, and hark back instead to the vedute paintings of Venetian artists such as Francesco Guardi. While the overall topography is accurate and elements such as the modern shipping visible in the background anchor the views in time, Bossoli has sought above all to stress the exotic and picturesque nature of the scenes he is describing: the palette is rendered in a heightened key, the scale of the foreground figures and height of the Galata tower are exaggerated and the skyline is liberally dotted with minarets.
Both canvases share a similar compositional structure, with a strong opposition between foreground and background planes. These are linked in one picture by a cypress lined avenue, and by the opening out past the Golden Horn to the Sea of Marmara in the other, both of which serve to create a sense of depth. The setting is enlived by Bossoli's characteristic use of staffage, also reminiscent of Guardi and Canaletto, dotted with brightly dressed figures who serve to convey the hustle and bustle of everyday life. In one composition a group of figures stand chatting and drinking by a large fountain on the left; a pair of men stand in greeting while others ask for directions. In the second a group of women huddle in conversation below a fountain, balanced by the group of men, smoking and conversing under an awning on the other side. These little vignettes, rendered with careful attention to detail and in bright, colourful tones, combine to create pictures that are full of life and breathe the atmosphere of Constantinople.
The authenticity of these paintings has been confirmed in a letter by Dott. Cav. Arabella Cifani.