This pastoral landscape, emanating with timeless peace and harmony, is made attractive by the master’s easy brushwork, vivid colours, and the neary impressionistic treatment of the atmosphere and the vegetation bursting with life. This fresh, naturalistic approach led scholars to the supposition that Bloemen, like Dughet, painted his smaller pictures en plein air.
The master’s scenes are usually inhabited by figures painted by his Roman colleagues, e.g. Carlo Maratta and Pompeo Batoni. The elegant figures of these two paintings on display, absorbed in passive meditation, may have been painted by one of his collaborators, the Roman Placido Costanzi, who according to the documents, worked with Orizzonte between 1737 and 1744.
The painting is typical of the master not only thematically, but also formally. Firstly, because it has a companion piece and Bloemen painted his works almost exclusively “in coppia”. Secondly, it is so-called “tela da imperatore”, which was a format (100x140cm), much favoured by the artist.
Pigler, Andor, Katalog der Galerie Alter Meister, 1-2. Museum der Bildenden Künste, Szépművészeti Múzeum, Budapest. 2, Akadémiai Kiadó, Budapest, 1967, p. 69.
Szigethi, Ágnes – Nyerges, Éva – Ruzsa, György – Barkóczi, István – Tátrai, Vilmos, Tátrai, Vilmos (ed.), Old Masters’ Gallery; A Summary Catalogue of Italian, French, Spanish and Greek Paintings: Museum of Fine Arts Budapest 1, Budapest, 1991, p. 11-12.
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