His considerable qualities as a landscape artist enabled him to render the diverse physiognomy of the Swiss city in a successful selection of subjects and compositions [...].

Inspired by a new feeling for nature, Antonio Fontanesi’s works represent one of the highest achievements of 19thcentury Italian painting. Fontanesi’s training began at the Scuole Comunali di Belle Arti in Reggio Emilia and continued under the guidance of the landscape painter Prospero Minghetti. In 1847, at the age of twenty-nine, he left his home city to take part in the Risorgimento military campaigns for the unification of Italy. He enlisted as a volunteer in Luciano Manara’s battalion, before going on to fight under Garibaldi’s command. Following the Piedmontese defeat in Custoza in 1848, he sought refuge in Lugano and from there, in 1850, he reached Geneva, where he lived until 1865. Those years proved to be decisive for perfecting his talents as a draughtsman and for rapidly updating his style, firstly drawing upon the romantic landscape models of Alexandre Calame and then upon the modern results produced by French landscape artists linked to the Barbizon school, admired at the Exposition Universelle in Paris in 1855. 

The small watercolour Stradina di Ginevra (Street in Geneva) can be traced back to his first years in the city, when he had a decisive encounter with Victor Brachard, a print and painting dealer, who liked his early lithographic prints. These first means of making money focused on Geneva and the natural beauties of its surrounding area, which were already international tourist destinations. Between 1854 and 1855, Fontanesi produced a folder of twenty large lithographic prints entitled Promenade pittoresque par A. Fontanesi, 1re année. Intérieur de Genève, published in Geneva by Pilet & Cougnard.¹ His considerable qualities as a landscape artist enabled him to render the diverse physiognomy of the Swiss city in a successful selection of subjects and compositions: from the open, almost Parisian quai on Lake Lemans, to the monumental perspectives that frame simple stately homes, from lively meeting places to more secluded and characteristic scenes. The plate entitled Place de la Grenette (fig. 1) enables us to identify the place shown in the small, brightly lit view in watercolour that belonged to Francesco Federico Cerruti. The square drew its name from the imposing arcaded building on the right, the Grenette to be precise, built in 1746 to house the grain market. This building is no longer in existence today. 

Unlike the watercolour, the foreground of the lithographic print is animated by the presence of labourers preparing the heavy sacks of grain. The watercolour view breaks away from this more traditional, narrative scene, offering up a freer image that highlights the horizon and the façades on the buildings in full light on the left, depicted from a virtuoso angle. The composition concentrates on the shadows projected onto the cobbles by the buildings on the right, including the Grenette, while the perspective guides our eyes towards the lake. The airy sky, with changing tones of blue, is emphasised by the flight of several birds rendered with rapid, dark touches. The fully autonomous nature of the composition suggests that there was a slight break between the execution of the watercolour that belonged to Cerruti and the production of the lithographic print in the Promenade folder. 

Belonging to the Piedmontese sculptor Edoardo Rubino (Turin, 1871-1954), the small watercolour was bought by Francesco Federico Cerruti from the Turin gallery of the Fogliato brothers, probably in the 1990s.

Virginia Bertone

¹ Calderini, 1901, p. 36; Maggio Serra, in Turin 1997, pp. 156-157.