The STaTe hermiTage muSeum annual reporT

most notable acquIsItIons of 2010
august Querfurt (1696–1761)
hunTeRs ouTside a TaveRn
Austria, late 1720s at the earliest
Oil on canvas; backed up. 31.2 × 42.2 cm
Acquired through the Purchasing Commission
The painting shows a wayside inn, and a hunter mounted
on a dark horse blowing his horn just outside the entrance,
calling his companions. Before him there is a man in a doublet,
with a hat in his outstretched hand, who is holding
the reigns of a white horse arching its neck and stepping to
and fro impatiently. On the right, a beater is taking care of
the dogs. In the foreground on the left there is a peasant
woman with another dog at her feet.
The painting contains all the characteristic features of
a Querfurt work: a common diagonal arrangement, a typically
low horizon executed in yellowish, bluish and grey
shades; the characteristic colour scheme with light and
dark blues and pink and red spots, as well as rough white
brushstrokes which emphasize volume and movement;
a typical horizontal craquelure (short wavy lines somewhat
similar to lines in a book). The figure of the rider blowing
a horn could have undergone alterations.
This work is an original version of Querfurt’s painting Leaving
for a Hunt auctioned by Hampel, Berlin (No 309, oil on
canvas, 26.5 × 37 cm, monogramme on the lower right,
backed up). Some details of the design are different: the
signed picture has a castle instead of an inn, and a whole
group of people instead of the peasant woman with the
dog: a lady who is probably about to mount a white horse,
a gentleman accompanying her, and a Moor boy. The landscape
as a whole remains unchanged.
August Querfurt was an Austrian battle painter, also famous
for his hunting and genre scenes and portraits.
He was first instructed by his father Tobias Querfurt the
Elder, then completed his education in Augsburg under
the celebrated battle and animal painter Georg Philipp
Rugendas. In 1737, he was commissioned to work for Duke
Karl Alexander von Württemberg, for whose castle at Ludwigsburg
he painted two large panels (11 × 4 m): The Battle
of Belgrade and The Battle of Höchstädt.
It is well known that eighteenth-century German and
Austrian painters depended heavily on other schools and
were seldom original. This is true for Querfurt, but it has
to be noted that in spite of their imitative character, his
works have a vibrant, spur-of-the-moment air and his battle
scenes are expressive and dynamic.
Querfurt’s works are present in museums and private collections
of all European countries. The Hermitage currently has
two of his masterful battle scenes on display in the section
of German painting of the 15th – 18th centuries.
By Maria Garlova
antonio marini (1668–1725)
seaside landscape
Venice, late 17th – early 18th century
Oil on canvas. 75 × 116 cm
Acquired through the Purchasing Commission
The painting shows a hilly seaside surrounding a bay; in
the background the shore becomes a wide sandy beach,
while in the foreground it is steep and rocky. Port buildings
can be seen far away, and there is a church (monastery?)
a little closer to the onlooker. There is a fishing schooner
on the left, not far from the shore. In the foreground on
the left, near a sheer cliff, there is a genre scene: soldiers
and officers wearing cuirasses, helmets, and wide-brimmed
hats with plumes, have settled down for a meal on the large
boulders. The characteristic manner of staffage painting,
recognizable landscape features, as well as elements of the
colour scheme and chiaroscuro allow for a confident attribution
of this painting to the Venetian artist of the 17th –
18th century. The man in a plumed hat sitting on a boulder
with his back to the viewers is nearly identical to the rider
on the painting Rocky Landscape with Soldiers (Accademia
Carrara, Bergamo) signed by Marini; the general landscape
setting is reminiscent of the Sea Port with Fishermen
which was auctioned by Semenzato, Venice in May 1981.
most notable acquIsItIons of 2010
Antonio Marini is one of the Italian painters only recently
included in art histories: after the artist’s signature was
found on one of the works in the Accademia Carrara
in 1963, a considerable number of paintings previously
attributed on the basis of stylistic affinity to the circle of
early Marco Ricci were recognized as works by Antonio
Marini.
Over the next thirty years, the artist’s prominent individual
manner has allowed researchers to form an extensive
corpus of paintings which was brought together in 1992
in the first monograph on Marini by Maria Silvia Proni
(Maria Silvia Proni. Antonio Marini. L’opera completa. Napoli,
1992). It includes 111 works by the artist, who is representative
of a trend in seventeenth-century art which
was not as widespread in Venice as it was in Genoa or Naples:
scenes of shipwreck, fierce cavalry skirmishes, landscapes
with military bivouacs or genre sketches from the
life of fishermen, peasants, and the lazzaroni often seen
in the paintings by Salvator Rosa, Il Cavalier Tempesta,
or Alessandro Magnasco. Marini managed to find his own
manner and not to blend in with the numerous followers
and imitators of Rosa or Magnasco. In the years that
have elapsed since the publication of Proni’s book, the
number of Marini’s paintings on the antiquarian market
have nearly doubled his oeuvre.
By Irina Artemyeva
18 19