Alessandro Magnasco

Lissandrino

Italian, 1667 - 1749

Explore Selected Works

Alessandro Magnasco, The Choristers, c. 1740/1745, oil on canvas, Gift of Emily Floyd Gardiner, 1972.17.1

The Choristers

Alessandro Magnasco · c. 1740/1745 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1972.17.1

Two pale-skinned men face each other across surging waves in a cove surrounded by trees in this horizontal painting. Tall trees to each side have dark, gnarled trunks and small, olive-green leaves. They curve toward each other like parentheses. Swirling sage-green and muted turquoise water kicks up waves highlighted with ivory white. The water heaves in great waves back into the distance where it meets a blue form, which could be a mountain or more water. The men are small in scale within the domineering landscape. One man stands on the shore near the lower left corner. His topaz-blue cloak lifts high in the wind behind him. He is barefoot, has long brown hair, and he holds out one hand toward the second man, who is waist-deep in the water. That second man’s honey-yellow and blue robes whirl around him as he lunges forward, arms spread wide. The narrow band of land spanning the bottom edge of the canvas is strewn with jugs and bits of stone and lumber. A pale ship with a man leaning over our side is barely visible on the right at the mouth of the cove. Above the scene, a robin’s egg-blue sky peeks out from wide streaks of flax-yellow and peanut-brown clouds.
Alessandro Magnasco, Christ at the Sea of Galilee, c. 1740, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1943.4.31

Christ at the Sea of Galilee

Alessandro Magnasco · c. 1740 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1943.4.31

A young man wearing only a loincloth kneels at a river’s edge, facing a man holding a bowl over his head with two winged angels nearby in this almost square painting. Three of the people are pale skinned, one is tan, and all have dark hair. Jesus kneels at the bottom center of the composition. Saint John the Baptist, the man to our right, has tanned skin and is wrapped in a tawny brown cloak. He holds a tall staff in one hand and extends the bowl over Jesus’s head with his other. A white dove hovers above in a butter-yellow starburst. The two angels to our left have dark gray wings that barely catch the light in the murky, active landscape. One wearing sand-brown robes kneels and looks toward Jesus. The other wears straw-yellow and looks away, a cloth held up in both hands. The river cuts back and forth across the composition from the background to our left, and it sweeps across the picture and churns off the right side of the painting. Trees tower up along the left edge next to the group, and a grass-covered outcropping thrusts high into the sky behind Jesus and Saint John the Baptist. Pale yellow and cream-white clouds puff across a vivid blue sky across the top of the picture. Brushstrokes are visible throughout, especially in the water and landscape.
Alessandro Magnasco, The Baptism of Christ, c. 1740, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1943.4.27

The Baptism of Christ

Alessandro Magnasco · c. 1740 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1943.4.27

Alessandro Magnasco, The Baptism of Christ, 1720s, brown wash over black chalk, heightened with white gouache, on buff laid paper, New Century Fund, 2018.165.3

The Baptism of Christ

Alessandro Magnasco · 1720s · brown wash over black chalk, heightened with white gouache, on buff laid paper ·  Accession ID  2018.165.3

Alessandro Magnasco, A Penitent at a Quaker Sermon, c. 1710-1720, brush and brown wash with white heightening on paper washed gray brown, Pepita Milmore Memorial Fund, 2013.78.1

A Penitent at a Quaker Sermon

Alessandro Magnasco · c. 1710-1720 · brush and brown wash with white heightening on paper washed gray brown ·  Accession ID  2013.78.1

Alessandro Magnasco, Figures in a Storm, brush and brown ink with brown wash, heightened with white, over red chalk on laid paper, Gift of Mr. William T. Hassett, Jr., 1972.40.1

Figures in a Storm

Alessandro Magnasco · · brush and brown ink with brown wash, heightened with white, over red chalk on laid paper ·  Accession ID  1972.40.1

Bibliography

1769

  • Ratti, Carlo Giuseppe and Raffaele Soprani. Le vite de'pittori, scultori ed architetti genovesi. 2 vols. Genoa, 1769: 2:155-162.

1944

  • Pospisil, Maria. Magnasco. Florence, 1944.

1949

  • Geiger, Benno. Magnasco. Bergamo, 1949.

1977

  • Franchini Guelfi, Fausta. Alessandro Magnasco. Genoa, 1977.

1991

  • Franchini Guelfi, Fausta. Alessandro Magnasco. Soncino, 1991.

1996

  • De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 177-178.