Landscape with Peasants at a Fountain

Zuccarelli, born in Pitigliano, Tuscany, learned figural painting in Rome, and while there came to know the work of Claude Lorrain, which would have a long-term effect on the development of his style in landscape, his primary genre. The young artist’s earliest dated paintings were two altarpieces commissioned in 1724 for the church of his native town (and now in the local museum), which were presumably completed before he departed for Florence, where he is recorded in 1728. While there he learned etching. In or perhaps before 1732 he moved to Venice after having stayed for some months in Bologna. The death of Marco Ricci in 1730 had opened the way for a gifted landscape painter to succeed in Venice, and Zuccarelli devoted himself to the genre with great success while acquiring a number of important patrons, the British collector Consul Smith among them. In 1745–46 Smith commissioned from him and from the Venetian painter, architect, and print-maker Antonio Visentini a series of eleven overdoors focusing on the great monuments of English Palladian architecture. With his Arcadian style fully developed, Zuccarelli moved in 1752 to London, where he spent ten productive years and had a successful sale before returning to Venice to join the local academy in 1763. George III, meanwhile, had acquired the bulk of Consul Smith’s collection, including twenty-five canvases by Zuccarelli, and had become his ardent admirer. The artist’s style was in fact perfectly tuned to the traditional English taste for the Claudian pastoral landscape and he returned to London for a second, shorter period, from 1765 to 1771, and in 1768 became a founder member of the Royal Academy. When he was re-established in Venice he was elected president of the academy there. Eventually he retired to Tuscany, where he died, much honored by his contemporaries. Zuccarelli was a prolific painter and draftsman. His best oils, some of which are biblical and mythological, are in the British royal collection and in the Accademia, Venice.

The Met owns one composition by him of relatively early date, probably from the late 1730s and much influenced by his predecessor Marco Ricci. The horizontal wooded landscape typically includes hills in the distance, a pool and a fountain, and, among the figures, a woman carrying a water jar on her head.

Katharine Baetjer 2016

Bernard M. Baruch, New York (until 1959; life interest, 1959–d. 1965)

Allentown, Pa. Allentown Art Museum. "The Circle of Canaletto," February 21–March 21, 1971, no. 43 (as "Landscape with Figures").

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

Burton B. Fredericksen and Federico Zeri. Census of Pre-Nineteenth-Century Italian Paintings in North American Public Collections. Cambridge, Mass., 1972, pp. 214, 500, 609.

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, pp. 93–94, pl. 106, call it a characteristic Zuccarelli and suggest a date in the late 1730s.

Katharine Baetjer. European Paintings in The Metropolitan Museum of Art by Artists Born Before 1865: A Summary Catalogue. New York, 1995, p. 92, ill., as "Landscape with Peasants at a Fountain".

Federica Spadotto. Francesco Zuccarelli. Milan, 2007, p. 107, no. 48, ill. p. 198.