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| Marco Ricci (1676-1730), Apollo and the Muses, c.1710 © Trustees of the Cecil Higgins Art Gallery (The Higgins Bedford) |
While most of the artworks in the Under the Same Sky exhibition are by Britain’s finest landscape
artists, Marco Ricci’s Apollo and the
Muses offers a taste of Italian Baroque splendour. For all of its serene
heavenliness, the dramatically dark life of the artist could inspire the most
brutal Caravaggio scene.
Ricci was born in Belluno, Italy, in 1676. His uncle, Sebastiano (1659-1734), was an eminent painter and trained a young Marco in his workshop. Despite receiving acclaim in Venice, Marco had to flee in his twenties after killing a gondolier in a brawl.
During his time on the run, he refined his techniques in Dalmatia (part of modern-day Croatia), the Netherlands, Florence and Rome. In the latter, he became a prolific maker of capricci — etchings of ancient ruins, and vedute — ‘views’ of cities, both of which were popularised by his famous contemporary Canaletto (1697-1768).
In 1708, Ricci began his two-year stay in England. Generally unexposed to the Italian Baroque style, English patrons admired his work. This popularity secured him a good living painting scenery for the Queen’s Theatre in Haymarket, London.
His talents also attracted many private patrons who commissioned him to decorate their homes Apollo and the Muses is an example of a ceiling design he may have done for a client. Its loose, light brushstrokes show his adoption of the styles from all the places he visited, resulting in a talent of quickly producing vivid yet ethereal scenes.
In 1730, he is said to have taken his own life dressed in a bizarre costume with a sword so that he could die ‘like a cavaliere.’
Despite achieving great recognition and patronage during his lifetime, art history has largely neglected Marco Ricci, preferring instead to celebrate his uncle. However, he has been described by contemporary critics as ‘one the most versatile eighteenth-century Italian artists’.
See Apollo and the Muses by Marco Ricci in the Under the Same Sky exhibition, on until Sunday 27 June. Safety measures are in place and you will need to book a FREE timed entry ticket to visit.
Written by Tom MacKinnon, Curatorial Volunteer
Bibliography:
http://www.getty.edu/art/collection/artists/434/marco-ricci-italian-1676-1730/
Marco Ricci. (2000). A Capriccio with Horses Watering in a River outside a Walled Town, c. 1720. Art Institute of Chicago Museum Studies, 26(1), 28-93. doi:10.2307/4104416
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