Carlo Bossoli (Italian painter) 1815 - 1884
A View of Constantinople and the Golden Horn from Eyüp by Moonlight, 1846
tempera and gouache on paper
38.7 x 59.7 cm. (15.25 x 59.7 in.)
signed and dated 'C. Bossoli 1846.' (lower right)
private collection
Catalogue Note Christie's
Bossoli was the leading topographical painter of his age, and a superb draftsman, noted for the format of his broad vistas and an amazing wanderlust which took him beyond Italy, through Europe to the Middle East. He was also a major chronicler of the Italian Risorgimento. Above all, his pictures deftly manage to combine both the picturesque and the modernity of his age.
The artist first travelled through Constantinople in 1839, on his way back to Italy from Odessa, where his family had emigrated when he was a child. The city, which was a regular staging post on the journeys he made between the Crimea and Italy in the early 1840s, made an indelible impression upon him, and throughout his life he combined into highly finished compositions the drawings he had made whilst there.
In this dramatically lit composition, the artist succeeds in creating an image which fuses the naturalism of topographical detail with a profoundly Romantic and timeless atmosphere.
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