Antonio Maria Marini (venice, 1668 - 1725),

Antonio Maria MARINI (Venice, 1668 – 1725)

Ship in a Storm

Oil on canvas (Italian relining from the early 19th century)
45.5 × 39 cm
Beautiful Louis XVI gilded frame, carved with pearls and heart-shaped motifs

Bibliography:
Laura Muti and Daniele de Sarno Prignano, Antonio Marini, Luisè Editore, 1991.

Painted with great energy, using almost expressionistic brushstrokes, in a beautiful harmony of blues, whites tinged with gold, and dark greens, our seascape predates the storms of Joseph Vernet by more than half a century. It in fact illustrates a kind of pre-Romanticism, a 17th-century Sturm und Drang (literally “storm and passion”), rooted in the strange and brilliant work of Salvator Rosa (1615–1673), and reaching its height at the end of the century among “anti-classical” artists of Northern Italy such as the Genoese Alessandro Magnasco (1667–1749) or his occasional collaborator Francesco Peruzzini (1643–1724), who died in Milan. The vibrant brushwork, close to the liveliness of a sketch, also characterizes 18th-century Venetian artists such as Marco and Sebastiano Ricci, Gaspare Diziani, and Francesco Guardi.

Our seascape, in which the drama of man unfolds within a nature that both transcends and crushes him, had logically been attributed to Francesco Peruzzini. We instead assign it to an artist close to him, whose works have often been confused with his: Antonio Marini. Born in Venice, Marini first trained in Padua, the city from which his family originated. Active in Bologna from 1693, he returned to Padua around 1700 and came into contact with Sebastiano Ricci. He then settled in Venice, where he benefited from the support of a wealthy English patron, Lord Edward Irwin, who commissioned paintings for his residence, Temple Newsam House in Leeds. Specializing in landscapes, fantastical seascapes, and battle scenes, Marini painted them in a “spettacolare” manner that aligns him with Magnasco, Peruzzini, and the Venetian school. One is thus struck by the resemblance to Magnasco’s mannerist and elongated figures in the small character in our painting who clings to a rock in the foreground, about to be swept away by a giant wave.