Andrea Locatelli Landscape with a Waterfall and Distant Lake About 1730

Biography

Born 1695
Died 1741
Nationality Italian

Locatelli was one of the most successful Roman landscape and view painters of the early eighteenth century. At the height of his career was much in demand, patronised by such distinguished Roman noble families as the Ruspoli, Ottoboni, Albani and Colonna, but he reportedly died in poverty. Two important commissions from further afield – for the Duke of Savoy in Turin and the Spanish king Philip V – came to Locatelli through the agency of the architect Filippo Juvarra. Little is known for sure about his life and career, although Nicola Pio did include him among the artists’ biographies he drafted around 1723-24. He trained first with his father, then with two minor specialist marine painters, but his style was really formed from his study of his great seventeenth-century predecessors, notably Claude Lorrain, Salvator Rosa and above all Gaspar Dughet. He specialised in idealised views of the Roman Campagna, but also produced topographical views of Rome for the growing Grand Tourist market, usually smaller in scale and painted on copper. A few mythological paintings with larger figures were probably collaborations with specialist figure painters.