Landscape with a Large Tree

Etching and engraving, 1603, dated and signed at lower right.

Magnificent work, printed on contemporary laid paper without watermark, with thin margins, in excellent condition.

Famous mainly for his pen-and-ink landscapes, Remigio Cantagallina worked in Florence for fifty years; along this period, he realized more than sixty engravings between 1603 and 1635. Over a half of his works depict landscapes, while others represent festival and theatre subject. Cantagallina was born in Borgo San Sepolcro and he reached his artistic maturity around 1600.

There is only one painting that can be ascribed to the artist, which he realized together with his brother Antonio. It is The Last Supper, painted in 1604 for a monastery in Borgo. Together with Antonio and the other brother Giovanni Francesco, both registered as students there, Cantagallina studied in the school of Giulio Parigi in Florence. He maintained a working relationship with Parigi for many years, engraving his theatrical subjects and his festivals. Very likely, it was Cantagallina himself who encouraged Parigi, in 1608, to use his ability in the art of engraving, and the two artists cooperated to the realization of a project. The power of the staged biting of Cantagallina influenced Jacques Callot, with whom he worked in 1616 on The War of Love.

In the first period, Cantagallina's landscapes mirror the Northern prototypes; nevertheless, there is a set of four smaller engravings, dated 1609 and depicting religious events, which bears a more miniaturistic style, whose figures are more lively and closer the Parigi’s drawings. The artist’s drawings , many of which dated, include a sketchbook documenting a trip to the northern part of the Netherlands. The last known drawing bears the date 1655. In his last works, Cantagallina used to put a huge tree in the foreground, in the centre of the composition, reminding the theatrical scenes; his style and execution became more topographically accurate and more atmospheric.
This rare work is part of a series of six engravings, with same size and style, dated 1603, which was in the forefront of the growing passion for landscapes in Florence. They were also foreboding of a renewed interest in etching in the whole city, which had its great development with the patronage of the Medici family. Since there were no national points of reference, the artist found his model in the Northern engraver Paul Bril, from whom he derived his inspiration for the realization of this plate, especially from his A Mountain Landscape with Hermit Praying (Hollstein 3) or his Views of the Roman Campagna, both dated 1590. Bril worked in France and Italy and died in Rome in 1626. In both Bril’s and Cantagallina’s compositions, a huge tree in the foreground becomes the central subject, flanked by architectural elements on one side and by a view in the background on the other. For this work, Cantagallina etched the plate twice to achieve lines with different weight. As a matter of fact, the view in the background behind the buildings on the left is very light, while wider lines outlining the rocky mound and the plants in the lower centre have been achieved with a longer exposure to the acid. The final effect recalls a stage set, with different recession planes instead that a real perspective. Cantagallina used also a burin to darken the leaves of the tree on upper left and to strengthen those on upper right.

Bibliografia

Reed & Wallace, Italian etchers of the Renaissance & Barocque, p. 210, 107.