Landscape with animals and nude

The work is one of a pair of paintings.

See also Inv. A 386

The two landscapes originally belonged to the Vicenza noblewoman Paolina Porto Godi and became part of the Gallery with the other paintings in her rich collection of works of art.

They were painted by Cornelio Dusman, who worked in Vicenza in the seventh decade of the seventeenth century, specialising in battle scenes, landscapes and animals. His subjects were rendered with the realism and naturalism typical of the figurative language of the north, which the artist enriched with various elements that he had assimilated in the years he spent in Vicenza, in contact with the art of Francesco Maffei and of Giulio Carpioni.

Some of the animals that inhabit the serene landscapes in the Gallery, such as the dog in the first painting and the ducks in the second, appear in other works by Dusman, demonstrating that the artist used the same drawings to produce different works. Even the nude, seen from the back, often appears in the painter's repertoire.

The presence of the male figure in the second painting gives it hidden meanings: “the nude which seems to be awaking from sleep, observed without curiosity by the animals, is like a new Adam” (Villa).