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Alessandro Magnasco

Arsenal in a Ruined Basilica, ca. 1711-1720

Now On View

Description

Maker

  • Alessandro Magnasco, 1667-1749, Italian

Title

Arsenal in a Ruined Basilica

Year

ca. 1711-1720

Medium

Oil on canvas

Materials/Techniques

Materials

  • oil paint

Supports

  • canvas

Dimensions

146.7 x 214.6 cm (57 13/16 x 84 1/2 inches)

Place

Italy

Type

  • Paintings

Credit

Museum Works of Art Fund, Museum Membership Fund, Georgiana Sayles Aldrich Fund, Mary B. Jackson Fund, Edgar J. Lownes Fund, Walter H. Kimball Fund, Jesse Metcalf Fund, and Museum Gift Fund

Object Number

63.061

Projects & Publications

Publications

A Handbook of the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

Exhibition History

Exhibition History

Intermission

December 16, 2016 - July 2, 2017

Italian Painting

April 6 - August 25, 1990

Masterpieces from the Museum of Art, Rhode Island School of Design

July 18 - September 14, 1979

Italian Art in Celebration of Rhode Island’s Italian Festival; Seven Centuries of Italian Art

April 12 - May 21, 1967

European Galleries

Italian artist Alessandro Magnasco trained as a portraitist and as a painter of figures for religious subjects, but he is known for inventing dramatic genre scenes staged within architectural fantasies. The decaying interior of a vast Roman public building provides the setting for this narrative. Its massive arches frame darkened spaces in which clusters of sketchily painted bandits are camped, surrounded by weapons and looted goods. Flickering strokes of lighter pigment fall on the figures’ tattered clothing and animate their gestures, illuminating the murky recesses of the ruins.

Use

The images on this website can enable discovery and collaboration and support new scholarship, and we encourage their use. This object is in the public domain (CC0 1.0). This object is Arsenal in a Ruined Basilica with the accession number of 63.061. To request high-resolution files or new photography, please send an email to imagerequest@risd.edu and include your name and the object's accession number.

Feedback

We view our online collection as a living documents, and our records are frequently revised and enhanced. If you have additional information or have spotted an error, please send feedback to curatorial@risd.edu.

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