File:Artgate Fondazione Cariplo - Mantovani Luigi, Roma o Veduta di Castel Sant'Angelo a Roma.jpg

This work was purchased in 1991 along with the rest of the Istituto Bancario Italiano (IBI) Collection. During this period it was restored and relined; the original stretcher was replaced and the size of the canvas reduced in the process, since it was slightly larger when displayed in the retrospective devoted to Luigi Mantovani at the Palazzo della Permanente, Milan, in 1988. To date, this is the only important exhibition that has given a detailed picture of the artist’s whole career, which had already been commemorated ten years after his death, in 1967, with a retrospective at the Galleria Mainetti in Milan.

The large painting, dated 1927, depicts a striking view of the Tiber with the dome of St Peter’s in the background and, on the right, the massive Castel Sant’Angelo from which the bridge of the same name, which occupies the centre of the canvas, extends across the river. Here, the artists adopts a perspectival approach that is recurrent in his production of views, which places the monumental buildings in the distance to create a spectacular backdrop. This produces a broad vista of the city and an extremely airy effect accentuated by the loose, soft brushwork that breaks up the forms and captures the variations in light and colour.

Another version of the work, entitled Morning on the Tiber, was displayed in 1930 at a solo show devoted to the artist at the Galleria Micheli in Milan, together with a wide selection of paintings executed during his stays in Rome, and earlier works with Lombardy as their subject.

Views of Tivoli, the Roman countryside and the principal monuments of Rome were displayed for the first time in Milan at the Club dell’Unione in 1921 and, again, in 1923 at the 1st Esposizione Internazionale dell’Acquarello organised by the Acquarellisti Lombardi. Hence, the artist’s first sojourn in Rome could date to this period. Documented in the introductory text for the Milanese show at the Galleria Micheli as a relatively brief sojourn of only two months, it was followed by a longer stay between 1927 and 1930. These dates are born out both by the one on the work in the Collection and by an article on a solo exhibition of the artist’s work held in the Italian capital in 1930.

Moreover, the view of Rome depicted in this painting was reprised by the artist twenty years later in a canvas entitled Rome, the Tiber which, characterised by the more fluid and free facture of his maturity, has recently appeared on the market. The lack of biographical information about the painter in the years between 1942 and 1953, combined with the hiatus in his exhibition activity, prevents us from establishing with any certainty if this work was painted from life, possibly during Mantovani’s stay in Rome in 1947, the year he executed a large group of views of the capital. More likely is the hypothesis that the canvas is a later version of the painting in the Collection, probably executed with the help of sketches or a photograph.