BARTOLOMEO PINELLI (1781-1835)

FOUR SCENES OF LIFE IN TIVOLI (1804-5)
Each signed variously Pinelli f. Roma or Pinelli Roma
Pen & ink with watercolour
Each 35 x 47.5 cm
 
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Roberta Olson, 'Are Two Really Better than One? The Collaboration of Franz Kaiserman and Bartolomeo Pinelli', in Master Drawings, vol. 48, no. 2 (Summer, 2010), pp.195-226
 
 
 
 
This quartet of lively scenes around the actual town of Tivoli likely date from around the period that Pinelli worked for the Swiss artist, Franz Kaisermann (1765-1833), though they are not thought to be collaborative works. The two artists' association began around the end of 1799 and the beginning of 1800, while they were both living on opposite sides of the Piazza di Spagna in Rome, and the working relationship appears to have continued for at least six years after this, and likely longer. According to Pinelli's first biographer, Oreste Raggi, Kaisermann espied the young artist selling sketches at nighttime on the streets of Rome, and hired him on the spot for a stipend to draw the staffage in his views around the Campagna and Tivoli. Pinelli no doubt grew as a landscape painter during this period, and the present works show the strong influence of the Swiss Kaisermann on the young artist, with bright ochre-yellow hues and blues dominating the palette, whereas Pinelli's later works show more restraint and economy of colouring.
 
 
The distinction between the two artists' roles in their partnership was not quite so strict as was often the case, as Roberta Olson's research into the pair revealed: 
 
'It was heavily influenced by Kaiserman's own experience with Ducros, who, rarely signing or dating his watercolors, catered to connoisseurs on the Grand Tour...following an eighteenth-century Roman practice, [Ducros] soon began employing assistants to draw the figures in his compositions. After Ducros had decided on their placement, he left the appropriate spaces on the paper blank or merely outlined the figures, after which his collaborator completed and modelled them, usually in bright gouache. Kaisermann adopted Ducros' method and developed it further...Just as Ducros' landscape compositions...established models for Kaiserman, his early recordings of the ordinary inhabitants of Rome (popolani) and peasants (contadini) created the prototypes not only for his own assistants but also for those individuals responsible for the figures populating Kaiserman's landscapes.' [1]
 
 
The remarkably fresh colouring of these four sheets, with strong blues, yellows and greens, together with the proximity of the figures' handling to Kaisermann's own staffage, both suggest a relatively early date for their execution, perhaps shortly after Pinelli set out as an independent artist (but before he had established his own distinctive style). Together they present a Tivoli which was largely untouched by the outside world, save for the fascination which tourists and artists alike had for the town, its edifices and the views afforded by the local hill-country.