Landscape (recto and verso)

River landscape with ruins on recto
Landscape with fortifications on verso

Framed: 29.25" w x 25" h (74.3 x 63.5 cm)

Roman by birth, Onofri appears to have been Gaspard Dughet’s only pupil, and was deeply influenced by him. His style also shows the influence of the Bolognese school, particularly of Giovanni Francesco Grimaldi, to whom Onofri’s drawings are often erroneously attributed. Little is know of Onofri’s career, even the dates of his birth and death are unrecorded. He was undoubtedly a successful landscapist, and, when Dughet’s activity diminished in the 1660’s, he was engaged to decorate several rooms in the palaces of the Pamphilj and Colonna families. Onofri later moved to Florence, probably on account of the reputation of Prince Ferdinando de’Medici as protector of the arts, and for whom he painted large decorative landscapes for Villa Pratolino and his apartment in Palazzo Pitti. Payments are recorded for works by Onofri up until 1717, and he probably died in Florence soon after.
Onofri’s drawings are characterized by a rather meticulous dry technique, which makes use of parallel shading lines, reminding one that he was also an engraver (see Bartsch, XX, p. 237). This drawing shows how the artist, as was often the case, drew his inspiration from the idealized form of Classical landscape created by Annibale Carracci, Domenichino and Grimaldi, but modifying it according to the more realistic manner derived from his master, Gaspard Dughet, and from the Italianate Dutch landscapists. From the latter, in fact, he borrowed the motif of the ruins on the right, which otherwise would not have formed part of this idealized type of landscape. Judging from these elements, the drawing probably belongs to a fairly early moment of Onofri’s Roman period.