Antonio Francesco Peruzzini (Ancona, 1643/1646 - Milan, 1724), Rural Landscape with River and Town and Rural Landscape with River and Tower (2). Oil on canvas, 108 x 62 cm. Expert opinion Prof. Emilio Negro. In this pair of paintings, one can recognise the hand of what Mina Gregori described as "the most original and rupturing landscape painter of the late 17th century", namely Antonio Francesco Peruzzini. Finally identified by Arslan in 1959 as such 'Perugino', the author of a Saint Sebastian in a private Milanese collection, Peruzzini has recently been re-evaluated from his former status as a mere subordinate of Lissandrino (Alessandro Magnasco), with respect to whom he proves to be an excellent helper and original landscape painter. A distant mountainous horizon, of frozen vigour, is proposed in both canvases interspersed with a spindly tree in the background that swirls towards the sky. The anti-academicism and non-conformism that characterised Peruzzini's entire career are evident here and justify in retrospect his choice of such figurative collaborators as Magnasco and Sebastiano Ricci. Documented within the archives of the Archiepiscopal Curia of Milan in relation to the Parish of Santo Stefano Maggiore as well as in the Milanese State Archives, hence the double hypothesis of the year of birth due to the different age recorded at the time of death, the artist probably trained within the family, as both his father Domenico and brothers Paolo and Giovanni were already painters. Having later perfected his skills in landscape painting, Peruzzini first travelled to Rome in 1663, where there are traces of a shipment to Turin of canvases executed on behalf of Charles Emmanuel II of Savoy; from this period are the 'Burrasche' donated to the Holy House of Loreto, his earliest known works. Between 1682 and 1689 the artist is documented in Bologna, where he collaborated with Giovanni Antonio Burrini and Sebastiano Ricci on a commission from Count Annibale Ranuzzi. A number of canvases now conserved at Isola Bella in the Borromeo Archive testify to the artist's long stay in the Emilian city, as well as his happy relationship with Count Vitaliano Borromeo, supported by contracts extended to Venice, Modena, Parma, Turin and Casale Monferrato. The artist stayed in Milan between 1690 and 1695 in the pay of Marquis Cesare Pagani, thus getting closer to Alessandro Magnasco, with whom he would entertain a prolific relationship. In 1703, he lived at the Medici residences and attended to the most up-to-date requests of the Florentine nobility, even pleasing Ferdinando de' Medici, before retiring again to Milan with Magnasco and working there until his death. To confirm the attribution, one need only look at the two paintings with very similar compositions by Peruzzini: The Flight into Egypt in the Uffizi or the wooded landscape in the Allen Mermorial Art Museum, or the canvases in the Hermitage Museum in Genoa Temptations of St. Anthony (Berlin, Staatliche Museen Gemäldegalerie. Indistinguishable in these landscapes is the lightness of painterly touch and playful compositional skill, characteristics that render the spirit and moods typical of the European Baroque and Peruzzini's best landscapes.
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