Research Seminar

09 March 2023, 17.00, at the Swedish Institute of Classical Studies in Rome and on ZOOM

– LINK

Orfeo Cellura
“Landscape painters and the study of natural elements in Rome and Southern Italy (1750-1850) “

Landscape painters active during the Enlightenment and Restoration created several studies that represent natural elements, such as leaves, trees, rocks, caves, clouds. These elements were called accessoires (accessories) as defined by Pierre-Henri de Valenciennes in his well-known Elemens de perspective (Paris, 1799-1800). The reasons for focusing on accessoires were varied. Trees, for example, inspired many artists for their beauty, seen like sacred giants of nature. The study of trees changed over the years; drawn in the clear, rational light of the Ancien Régime, they were later redefined under the influence of Romanticism. Studies of caves and rocks followed the widespread attention given to vulcanology and the interest terrestrial phenomena. It was believed that an analysis of the soil could give a deeper understanding of the landscape. Finally, the sky represented an artistic challenge for painters, given the fast movements of clouds. All these studies were deepened by engagement with coeval treatises and scientific publications that gave painters the opportunity to better understand the shape and the meaning of natural elements before painting them on-site. This seminar will examine several examples of accessoires created by artists active in Rome and Southern Italy between the mid eighteenth century and the mid nineteenth century, focusing both on the treatises as well as the practice of sketching en plein air.

Orfeo Cellura is a Ph.D. candidate at the Università di Roma ‘Tor Vergata’, with a Dual Degree program at the Università della Svizzera Italiana (CH) and a Co-Tutorate at the Università di Roma Tre, preparing a dissertation on Giovan Battista Bassi and landscape painting in Rome in the first half of the nineteenth century. In Fall 2020 he was a fellow at Venice’s Fondazione Giorgio Cini and in June 2022 he served as an assistant curator at Copenhagen’s Statens Museum for Kunst under the supervision of Dr. Chris Fischer, Head of the Centre for Advanced Studies in Master Drawings. In September 2023, Cellura will start as a Eugene V. Thaw Fellow at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.