Cavalier and Shepherd

Francesco Casanova’s paintings are perhaps of no greater interest than his life, insofar as his career relates to that of his older brother and closest friend Giacomo, the writer, adventurer, and rake. The second of six children, Francesco was born in the summer of 1727 in London, where his Venetian parents were working in the theater. His father died young; his talented mother traveled and in 1750 settled in Dresden, where she continued to perform under the stage name "La Buranella." According to Giacomo, Francesco began his training in Venice in the early 1740s in the ateliers of Giovanni Antonio Guardi and Antonio Joli, and he also studied and must have worked with the battle painter Francesco Simonini. The brothers left Venice for Paris in 1751, and the following year moved to Dresden, where Francesco, a regular visitor to the picture gallery, studied Dutch genre painting, notably that of Philips Wouwerman and Nicolas Berchem. Francesco returned to Paris in 1757 and showed at the Académie Royale de Peinture et de Sculpture in 1761 (hors catalogue) with success, receiving an enthusiastic response from the critic Denis Diderot. He was admitted a full member in 1763 and exhibited until 1783. He also designed cartoons for the Beauvais tapestry manufactory. While in Paris, he gained great wealth, lived extravagantly, married twice, unhappily, and fathered a son. In 1783, he paid off his debts with the help of his brother and settled permanently in Vienna. He was patronized by, among others, Catherine II (the Great) of Russia, Prince Wenzel Kaunitz, and Prince Nicolas Esterházy. Francesco was better known in his own time than Giacomo and admired as the most important battle painter of his age, but the genre fell from favor and he is now forgotten.

Francesco Casanova had a fluid style as a draftsman and a naturalistic approach to depicting the thrust of battle. He devoted equal attention to riders and their mounts. His palette seems to have been lighter and some of his compositions less complex during his years in France, the period to which this painting of a soldier addressing a shepherd may belong. There are additional soldiers and victualers on the march in the left middle distance. Kühn (1984) has suggested that the painting may have been an overdoor.

Katharine Baetjer 2016

[Georges Hoentschel, Paris, until 1906; sold to Morgan]; J. Pierpont Morgan, New York (1906)

New York. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. "Venetian Paintings in the Metropolitan Museum," May 1–September 2, 1974, no catalogue.

Harry B. Wehle. The Metropolitan Museum of Art: A Catalogue of Italian, Spanish, and Byzantine Paintings. New York, 1940, pp. 296–97, ill., as by Francesco Casanova.

Josephine L. Allen and Elizabeth E. Gardner. A Concise Catalogue of the European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. New York, 1954, p. 17.

Carlo Donzelli. I pittori veneti del Settecento. Florence, 1957, p. 58, fig. 77.

Federico Zeri with the assistance of Elizabeth E. Gardner. Italian Paintings: A Catalogue of the Collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Venetian School. New York, 1973, p. 17, pl. 15, observe the influence of late seventeenth-century Flemish and French painting and, in the distant figures, of Francesco Simonini.

Brigitte Kühn. "Der Landschafts- und Schlachtenmaler Francesco Casanova (1727–1803)." Wiener Jahrbuch für Kunstgeschichte 37 (1984), pp. 101–2, fig. 14.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 95, ill. p. 96.

Nicole Hoentschel et al. Georges Hoentschel. Saint-Rémy-en-l'Eau, 1999, ill. p. 202 (gallery installation), reproduces it, framed as a roundel, installed in Hoentschel's Paris gallery.