I David: due pittori tra Sei e Settecento (Lugano, Milano, Venezia, Parma e Roma)

This is a tribute to two little known artists: Lodovico Antonio David, painter and writer of treatises, born in Lugano in 1648 from a family originating in Fribourg, and Antonio David, his son, born in Venice in 1680, who became portrait painter in Rome in the first half of the eighteenth century. Lodovico Antonio, following a brief apprenticeship at the studio of Francesco Cairo and Ercole Procaccini the Younger, moved to Venice in 1667 and remained there until 1684; that year marked the beginning of a two-year stay in Parma, before he moved to Rome in 1686. An eclectic personality, a scholar of Leonardo and Correggio, David was a friend of Ludovico Antonio Muratori, and through him he was able to enter into contact with great European culture.
Antonio David, on the other hand, following an apprenticeship at his father's studio, was, until 1737 (date of his death in Rome), a well-known and skilled portraitist. Excelling in this genre, he painted the portrait of popes, cardinals, and Roman noblemen, to the point of becoming, in 1717, the official painter of the royal Stuart family in exile in Rome. His output anticipates, in a marked way, the work of Pompeo Batoni, above all in the portraits of English noblemen visiting Rome.
The exhibition comprises about fifty works, including paintings by David father and son and also works by artists from Lombardy, the Veneto and Rome who were their contemporaries (Francesco Cairo, Ercole Procaccini the Younger, Paolo Pagani, Pietro Liberi, Pietro Della Vecchia, Giovan Battista Gaulli, called il Baciccio, Giovanni Maria Morandi, Giovanni Odazzi). The catalogue to this Rancate exhibition outlines the cultural koine and figurative climate in which the two artists were working.
The reconstruction of Lodovico Antonio's artistic life is particularly interesting: alongside his early works executed during his Venetian period, such as San Carlo Borromeo distributes the viaticum to the plague victims for the Basilica of Santa Maria Gloriosa dei Frari, the Delivery of the Sabattine Bull to John XXII for the Carmini church, there are two very beautiful canvasses painted in Rome for the Founding Saints chapel in the church of Sant'Andrea al Quirinale, depicting respectively the Adoration of the Shepherds and the Adoration of the Magi, both of which reveal a total formal and colour adherence to the poetics of Correggio; this can already be seen in David's work produced during his Venetian period, as evidenced by the superb Holy Family from a private collection. Alongside religious works, the painter executed portraits, such as the Portrait of Pope Clement XI Albani.


The life of Antonio David has not received as much attention; in this show he is represented by a series of portraits, from well-known works such as Portrait of Cardinal Neri Maria Corsini (Rome, Lincei National Academy), and Cardinal Lorenzo Corsini (Rome, Lemme Collection) to much lesser known paintings, such as Portrait of the Bishop of the house of Sacchetti and Portrait of the Marquise Ottavia Patrizi Sacchetti, which express late Roman Baroque tendencies but with strong rococo overtones.