JOLI, Antonio

The painting depicts an architectural capriccio with figures in oriental dress amongst ruins.

The figures in this architectural capriccio possibly represent Jephthah and his daughter.

This scenographic view of the Colosseum was painted by Joli painted during his English sojourn, between 1744 and 1748. He would probably have composed the view from earlier drawings.

The painting shows a view of the Tiber with the Ponte and Castel Sant’Angelo, St Peter’s Basilica and the Vatican beyond. Joli painted the site on a number of occasions, introducing slight changes in the format, viewpoint and staffage of each representation.

This panoramic view is topographical but Joli delights in populating his scenes with lively figures, both on the river and on its banks, and this is what gives each rendition its individuality: here merchants load their wares on a small trading vessel, a gondolier takes two ladies on a trip down the river, citizens and tourists of Rome cross the Ponte Sant’Angelo and point at the sites, and all this is imbued with the golden light that so inspired vedutisti to paint Rome in all her true colours.

The painting shows a view of the Tiber with the Castel Sant’Angelo and St Peter’s Basilica. Joli painted the site on a number of occasions, introducing slight changes in the format, viewpoint and staffage of each representation. Several of the versions were based on drawings that the artist took with him around Europe. In each different version the artist varied the mood of the sky and the arrangement of the staffage, though the boatman ferrying two figures lower centre seems to be a constant.

The painting depicts the royal procession that, according to a tradition established in 1734 by the Bourbon king, Charles Vii of Naples, wound its way through festive crowds along the Neapolitan seafront from the Palazzo Reale to the sanctuary of Santa Maria di Piedigrotta, an ancient place of worship and widespread popular devotion.

Joli had painted the same event earlier, between 1756 and 1760. He depicted Naples and its seafront with the royal procession from two vantage points: from the east, with a view of the hill of Posillippo in the distance, and from the west, with the smoking Mount Vesuvius in the background. These two viewpoints were first employed by Caspar van Wittel at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and they subsequently became part of the repertory of all painters of Neapolitan vedute.

The scene depicts La Iglesia y la Plaza de San Antonio in Aranjuez, with the gate to the formal palace gardens visible on the right of the scene and the royal coach appearing in the left foreground heading for the main entrance gate to the palace.

Joli painted a handful of topographical views of Aranjuez and in particular the royal palace during his brief sojourn in Spain, where he worked at the court of King Ferdinand VI from around 1749-54.

This painting presents a view of the City of Westminster over the River Thames from Lambeth in London. It is among Joli’s largest known works. The design closely follows Canaletto’s view of London in the Lobkowicz collection in Prague. Canaletto painted that work in 1746-47 and it probably remained in his studio in London, where Joli would undoubtedly have seen it.

This painting presents a view of the Bay of Naples from the south (possibly Poggioreale), looking north with a king of the Bourbon family, possibly Ferdinand IV, in the foreground. Joli was perhaps the most popular of the vedutisti working in Naples during the latter half of the 18th century, and it was his popularity in this particular field which led to his appointment in the court of Charles VII of Naples (1716-1788), and later Ferdinand IV (1751-1825).

Five other autograph versions of this composition are known.

This view of the Roman Forum was one of Joli’s most popular and successful compositions. Known as the ‘Campo Vaccino’ since the end of the sixteenth century due to the herds of cows that grazed there, peasants sold their produce and watered their animals in the Forum until the mid-nineteenth century. The design, however, is framed by monuments from the Forum’s more glorious past: from left to right we see the temple of Antoninus and Faustina, the Basilica of Maxentius, the church of Santa Francesca Romana with the Colosseum behind, the Arch of Titus, the Palatine Hill and the Farnese gardens, erected under Pope Paul III, and to the right the church of Santa Maria Liberatrice, which was to be demolished in 1899.