Carlo Antonio Tavella

1668 Milan – 1738 Genoa

Carlo Antonio Tavella was in his lifetime a respected and very active landscape painter, who in his youth spent quite some time in the Emilia Romagna and Tuscany and became familiar with the work of Crescenzio Onofri in Florence. In 1695 the artist was in Milan, where he was admitted to the studio of Pieter Mulier, known as il Cavalier Tempesta. Tavella’s painting possesses unmistakably eclectic stylistic features, drawing upon many different sources of inspiration. Apart from Tempesta, it was mainly the landscape art of Gaspar Dughet and Salvator Rosa which most shaped his style, although the influence of Genoese painting, particularly the pastoral genre scenes of Scorza and Castiglione, is unmistakable. Tavella painted the landscape backgrounds for many Genoese painters, such as Domenico and Paolo Girolamo Piola, while in his own works the staffage figures were often provided by fellow painters, such as the Piolas and Alessandro Magnasco.