Fanciful Landscape

Description This small panel of an imaginary landscape, in which a distant city and mountains are seen through a thick haze, is a fragment of a much larger composition, the original subject of which is unknown. Its style is comparable to that seen in many works by Benvenuto Tisi, known as Garofalo, the most important artist in 16th-century Ferrara. Similar landscapes appear in the background of Garofalo’s religious and mythological paintings.

Provenance Don Marcello Massarenti Collection, Rome [date and mode of acquisition unknown] [1897 catalogue: no. 554, as Paul Brill]; Henry Walters, Baltimore, 1902, by purchase; Walters Art Museum, 1931, by bequest.

Credit Acquired by Henry Walters with the Massarenti Collection, 1902