Ilario Mercanti Spolverini (1657 - 1734), Battle With A Cavalry Confrontation

Ilario Mercanti called "the Spolverini" (Parma, 1657-1734)
Battle scene with cavalry clash and view of the city of Parma 
oil on canvas, 82 x 118 cm 
with frame cm. 98 x 134
Works accompanied by a critical study of Professor Giancarlo Sestieri (Rome) 

Details complete on www.ANTICHITACASTELBARCO.it 

This "war scene" is a clear testimony of Ilario Mercanti (Parma 1657-1734), better known as Spolverini. The composition shows in the foreground in the center a dead knight on the ground knocked down with his horse, and a little more on the left a cannon with gunners who, under the watchful eye of a commander carrying a big red flag on the shoulder, are ready to fire, following the instructions of a leader riding a black horse seen from behind, having on his right a handful of riders with a trumpeter and a standard bearer.

To these characters "all around" which stand out in the foreground, follows the representation of a dense movement of cavalry who move on a plain crossed at the bottom by a river with a bridge with several arches, behind which is profiled urban with a high quadrangular tower and fortifications on a hill on the right, which can be identified with the city of Parma. 

A varied scene that partly recalls the episodes of war celebrating the military acts of the Farnese - paintings preserved in the museum of the same name in Piacenza - but with a greater amplification and a figurative fluidity that gives a dynamism evocative to the representation, continued with constructive touches and delicate chromatic passages and chiaroscuro.

This is one of the most significant new acquisitions in the Spolverini catalog - a name that seems to derive from the tapestry depots in his father's studio - after the publication of the book I Pittori di Battaglie. Italian and foreign masters of the 17th and 18th centuries (De Luca ed., Rome 1999, pp. 138-144 and 480-489). A work to be attributed to its full maturity and that Ilario still had to execute very quickly in the seventeenth century in the footsteps of Brescianino, probably his direct master, but whose ascendancy was conjugated with a flawless originality to his distinct personality. , also thanks to the particular inventiveness solicited by the Farnese family, of which he became official painter of the court, exiled from the thread of the "battle". Already in the last decade of the century, he painted ... [Giancarlo Sestieri]