Procession of Saint Rosalia in Palermo (1847)

Notes: Signed and dated lower right “C. Bossoli 1847 fece in Milano”

Provenance: Fortis collection (Lire 520)

Bibliography: M. Bernardi, Carlo Bossoli (1815-1884), Turin 1974, p. 25

Carlo Bossoli, renowned for his scenographic and meticulously refined landscapes, characterised by a punctual, fresh touch, was a tireless traveller and a dynamic reporter of places and moments that marked Italy and Europe from the Thirties to the Eighties of the nineteenth century.

Born in Lugano in 1815, he and his family soon moved to Odessa, a free port, centre of cultural and commercial exchanges and the place where his artistic training and development took place. After working in a bookshop, he began his apprenticeship at the workshop of Nannini, an Italian painter and set designer. He immediately specialised in watercolour and tempera cityscapes, large, descriptive masterpieces that allowed him to establish his first contacts with high society in Odessa, from which he began to receive various commissions. He received commissions from the governor, Prince Michael Woronzoff, who played host to him on the Crimean coast to paint some landscapes and where he was introduced to members of the Russian imperial family. In a short time, he gained considerable fame among aristocrats, who appreciated his mastery and his compositional ability, which can also be found in his many lithographs. From his experience in the field of scenography following the maestro, which led to the production of theatrical backdrops, he drew the main ideas for the development of his cosmoramas and panoramas of Odessa.

His first return to Italy dated back to 1839, a crucial journey for Bossoli, not only because of meeting the great masters in museums, but also for the fruitful exchanges with contemporary painters. The subject of discussion was landscapes, so he spoke above all with representatives of the Posillipo School in Naples. Subsequently, he visited northern Italy and reached Lugano in Switzerland, his hometown. After a three-year stay in Odessa, in 1844 he returned to Italy and settled first in Milan for ten years and then in Turin. His great skills of observation, curiosity and tireless desire to move around drove him to visit and portray various European cities in great detail.

The panoramas, the broad landscapes and the glimpses of sophisticated subtlety also flowed into chronicle and customs reportage, into urban and geographical description. Inspired by the landscape painting of the eighteenth century, he updated it and made it available to the mobile, modern gaze of the nineteenth century, without ever rendering it picturesque.

The Processione di Santa Rosalia a Palermo is an edifying example of this work that was both scenographic and narrative, in which optical precision combines with the great breadth of the view. Signed and dated “C. Bossoli 1847 fece in Milano”, it is part of a series of works produced in Milan which represent reminiscences of a recent past, full of travels and stays that the painter experienced in Constantinople, Rome, Naples and Palermo. The painting can be identified with the one mentioned in the words “quadri due di Roma e uno di Palermo” found in the list of commissions of 1847[1], belonging to the Fortis collection.

It is the accurate, festive chronicle of a day that is dear to the people of Palermo, the ancient procession of 14 and 15 July, represented here in its utmost splendour, when it ends on the beach with the large float that can be seen in the background on the left in the shape of a boat, the ship of the Turks who brought the plague from North Africa. On the right, overlooking the sea, Monte Pellegrino can be seen, where the sanctuary stands on the site where Saint Rosalia lived as a hermit in the 12th century and whose relics, carried in a procession, drove the plague out of the city in 1624.

Bossoli meticulously renders every detail of the crowd of people and the succession of buildings and, at the same time, manages to merge it into the complex overall atmosphere. He stimulates the onlooker’s curiosity by depicting a myriad of figurines: the population, religious people, soldiers, carriages, horses and ships on the horizon. Shining chromatism, perspective accuracy and perfectly orchestrated scenography testify to Bossoli’s definitive transformation from “painter of cosmoramas” to expert landscape artist, through a particularism at times conveyed by an abbreviated, quick touch which is seen in the clarity and luminous lightness of tempera on paper.

During all his experiences as a reporter painter, he nevertheless participated in various exhibitions in Brera from 1845 to 1852, but also in exhibitions in Turin and at the Royal Academy in London. Between 1852 and 1854, he was commissioned by the Savoy government to create tempera paintings depicting the landscapes touched by the newly inaugurated Piedmontese railway. The series, in the form of lithographs, was published with the title Views of the railway between Turin and Genoa in London in 1853 by the publisher Day & Son. A few years later, Eugenio di Savoia Carignano commissioned him to follow the Sardinian army during the 1859 campaigns in order to document them: he created tempera paintings and lithographs of the salient moments of the battles, the breaks in the camps and the landscapes that framed the movements of the army. It was a true war reportage published in England in 1859 under the title The war in Italy and can be found today at the Risorgimento Museum in Turin. He continued his exhibition work until 1884, the year of his death.

Elena Lago

[1] M. Bernardi, Carlo Bossoli. Monografia, 2 vol., Turin, Tipografia torinese, 1974, p. 25