Busiri, Giovanni Battista

Watermark: none.
Giovanni Battista Busiri was a distinguished painter of perspectival and architectural vedute of Rome and its surroundings. His finest paintings, often executed in tempera, were acquired by English and Scottish tourists who passed through Rome on the Grand Tour (Francis W. Hawcroft, "The Cabinet at Felbrigg," The Connoisseur (May 1958), pp. 216-219). Busiri's imaginary and topographical drawings of Rome were typically executed in pen and brown ink, as in this example in The Morgan Library & Museum. The two most important collections of Busiri's drawings are in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge and the British Museum, London. The Fitzwilliam Museum's album with 93 studies includes Roman views, along with sketches of Pisa, Siena, Viterbo, Naples, Florence, and Marino (inv. 3963). As in the Morgan sheet, these drawings are characterized by a style that is quick and free, with an abundance of hatching. This drawing presents three men walking along a pathway in the Roman countryside; the small-scale figures are overwhelmed by natural elements such as a large tree swaying in the wind and a mountain landscape in the distance. The drawing is comparable to a series of paintings that Busiri made of the environs of Rome, currently in the Busiri-Vici Collection and the Galleria Doria Pamphilij (Andrea Busiri Vici, Giovanni Battista Busiri, Vedutista romano del'700. Roma, 1966. nos. 133-137, pp. 108-109).