Francesco Casanova

(1732 - 1803)

oil on canvas, framed

38x35 cm

Equipped with expertise from Prof. Giancarlo Sestieri 2008 Comparative bibliography: G. Sestieri 1999 "This glimpse of an equestrian battle, introduced in the foreground by the barrel of a cannon and centered on a knight with a red cloth arched backwards on his steed while raising his saber, attacking an opponent who arrives on a white horse, while two waving flags emerge from the melee behind it, it is a work to be assigned to the Parisian period of Francesco Casanova, who moved to the French capital at the beginning of the fifties Venetian master towards representative elegance and an expressive intensity that surpasses his initial matrix matured in Simonini's direct teaching, with an assimilation of the new international scope expanded in various directions, a probable attention, certainly extemporaneous, can be noted, for Rubens' equestrian figures, and in any case a transition from the delicate rococo taste tendencies of the formative Venetian years to the search for a baroque-style impetus. The most fitting comparisons for this singular testimony by Casanova, to whose stylistic and typological signature the figures of prancing horses bring us above all, can be found in some of his drawings with a strongly pictorial appearance given their chromatic appearance preserved at the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which I have included in the illustrated repertoire dedicated to this master (G. Sestieri, 1999, p. 272, n. 22-23), but also some paintings not present in this selection, such as the Battle of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg