Jan Frans van Bloemen, called Orizzonte, 1662-1749, Attributed. View at Tivoli
£7,750
depicting an Arcadian classical landscape with a woman and her child engaging with a goatherd and his son, Hadrian’s Villa in the valley beyond, the Temple of Vesta on the hill above
After completing his apprenticeship with Anton Goubau in Antwerp, Jan Frans van Bloemen set out on the long journey through France bound for the Eternal City, where he arrived in 1688. His prolific output of landscape scenes enjoyed huge success in Rome, and both the Rospigliosi and Pallavicini families were his patrons. This success earned him a place among the Virtuosi of the Pantheon in 1714 and, from 1742, admission to the prestigious Accademia di San Luca. He would remain in Rome for the rest of his life and his paintings are permeated with a serene, classical atmosphere inspired by the Roman landscape he so admired and continuing a tradition started by Nicolas Poussin, Claude Lorraine and Gaspard Dughet earlier in the 17th century. It was because of his rendition of perspectives with clear skies and striking chromatics that his contemporaries nicknamed him Orizzonte (horizon).
The campagna at Tivoli was a popular subject with painters in the 17th and 18th centuries, as it was with their patrons, many of whom had visited Hadrian’s Villa on their Grand Tour, and van Bloemen executed several views of the region.
