Lot 153: PANDOLFO RESCHI

PANDOLFO RESCHI GDANSK CIRCA 1640 - 1696 FLORENCE AN ARMY BESIEGING A TOWN oil on canvas 136 by 215.5 cm.; 53 1/2 by 84 7/8 in.

Pandolfo Reschi – an italianisation of his original name, 'Pandolf Resch' – was born in Gdansk but was active for much of his life in Italy. His activity has been quite well studied over the years and although he starts out as an imitator of Jacques Courtois, called il Borgognone, Reschi quite soon develops his own distinctive style and originality in treating the theme of cavalry engagements. Towards the end of the 1660s, when Reschi was just a young man, he was employed by marchese Gerini in Florence to copy the works of Courtois. The biographer Filippo Baldinucci wrote of him: 'il colorito e l'impasto suo delle battaglie è chiaro e sfumato, a differenza del Borgognone, che quasi sempre ha usato lo scuro, e la forza nel suo dipingere, talmente che può, con verità, confessarsi essere stati due gran maestri, insigni nell'ottenere lo stesso intento per diversi mezzi ottimamente maneggiati'.υ1 Reschi's battle scenes owe much to Courtois in their invention and narrative, but he also had recourse to northern painters working in Italy such as the 'Bamboccianti', Philips Wouwerman and Nicolaes Berchem amongst others. Baldinucci states that Reschi arrived in Florence in around 1660, first working in the studio of Livio Mehus, then with Pier Dandini (with whom he became a close friend) and subsequently with the flower- and animal-painter Giusti. Gerini also commissioned Reschi to paint a number of battles of his own invention, and two of these have since been identified: one is in the National Gallery of Scotland, Edinburgh, and the other in Palazzo Gerini, Florence. In the 1680s he received further commissions in Florence and then travelled to Rome in 1686 in Cardinal Francesci Maria's entourage. The present battle-scene, in which figures on horseback are shown in the height of the action, before a panoramic landscape and a view of an imaginary town, is probably a mature work by the artist.

We are grateful to Novella Barbolani di Montauto for endorsing the attribution to Reschi, on the basis of photographs.


1. '...his use of colour and impasto in battles is light and sfumato, by contrast to Bergognone, who almost always uses dark shadows and sharpness in his paintings; so much so that one can, in all truth, consider them both great masters, who achieved the same goal but arrived it at by completely different albeit equally accomplished means'.