The House of Marco Ricci in the Bellunese

Marco Ricci

1726 · Pen and brown ink, brown wash · Robert Lehman Collection

Marco Ricci was the nephew of the celebrated Baroque painter Sebastiano Ricci, with whom he collaborated in the 1720s. This pastoral landscape of 1726 is significant less for its aesthetic attributes than for its telling inscription on the verso. Marco Ricci records that the house is his own, that it is located in the Bellunese, among the mountains, that it has a view of an adjacent monastery, and that it was made by the artist and "given on the spot" to Humphrey Mildmay, Esq. in 1726. This exchange is evocative of the many interrelationships of local Italian artists and Grand Tourists in the eighteenth century. Indeed, Ricci’s gift of this keepsake drawing suggests a very personal association.

Artist

Marco Ricci

Date

1726

Medium

Pen and brown ink, brown wash

Department

Robert Lehman Collection

Credit line

Robert Lehman Collection, 1975