13. Antonio Maria Monti
(fl. ca. 1680)
Landscape with a River, Washerwomen and a Ruined House

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Monti, Landscape with a River

Landscape with a River, Washerwomen and a Ruined House

Etching, ca. 1680, from Idee de Paese, Bartsch 6. Fine impression on laid paper with large, full margins; the lower left margin is weak and water-stained with a small hole, but the image is perfect (as are the remaining margins). Perhaps in no place but Italy does a ruined house (not even a castle or temple) add so much to a landscape. The very lushness of vegetation seems almost to demand a crumbling wall for contrast. According to Benezit, Monti was a Bolognese painter, miniaturist and etcher who worked around 1680, and nothing else about him seems to be known. However, there was a man of the identical name who apparently wrote an opera libretto in dialect (the first known) in Bologna in 1680. The coincidence is just too strong; this was a man of varied talents. Although known to Bartsch, the twelve circular landscapes of Monti’s Idee de Paese (his only known etchings) are today both rare and obscure. We have a few others from the set.

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