Alessandro Magnasco known as Lissandrino, The Verziere Market

Alessandro Magnasco known as Lissandrino and collaborators, The Verziere Market, oil on canvas, circa 1733  (inv. n. 228)

The lively scene of the Verziere market is liberally inspired from a place sung of by Milanese poets, where for centuries goods were bought and sold around the religious fulcrum of the Column of the Redeemer. According to a common practice in paintings of this genre, the Market of the Verziere stands as an illustration of collaborative work. The name of the quadraturista who painted the architectural background is unknown, as is that of the painter of still lifes who was responsible for the accurate depiction of a plethora of objects, including fruit and vegetable stalls and vivacious places of commerce. Another collaborator painted the bystanders, but the figures in motion, achieved through the use of filamentous brushstrokes, those from the second row up to the Redeemer were painted by the hand of Magnasco himself. These pictorial features also appear in the two Tempests (inv. nn. 1331,1332) which hang next to this work in the Gallery, and stand as examples of the artist's fertile visual imagination.