1318 - PIETRO DOMENICO OLIVERO

PIETRO DOMENICO OLIVERO The Four Seasons Four oil-on-canvas paintings, 66x65 cm; one monogrammed P.D.O. (autumn) and one monogrammed P.D.O.F. (winter). These four splendid and previously unpublished masterpieces by Pietro Domenico Ollivero depict allegories of the four seasons set against the backdrop of the daily lives of farmers and market vendors. The works (which will be published) offer unconventional perspectives on the seasons. In the spring painting, a careless shepherd leads his livestock on a collision course with a donkey laden with copper pots and other goods ready to be taken to market. In the second, depicting summer, there is the painter’s only known male nude to date, which attests to his excellent academic training in anatomical composition; the third depicts an autumn scene featuring a violent gust of wind that overturns market stalls and scatters their wares, with a priest leaning out to bless the crowd from the doorway of his church to ward off the storm. Winter, set in a house with Gothic architectural features, offers a chance to warm up by the fire and cook steaming meals. Hanging on a wall is a self-caricature of the painter (who was disabled due to congenital dislocation of both hips), depicting himself standing before an easel—as in a famous drawing in the Royal Library of Turin—and signing it with his characteristic initials, P.D.O. A sort of signed seal for a series of singular artistic importance, worthy of a museum. Bibliography: See Arabella Cifani, Franco Monetti, *I Piaceri e le Grazie. Collezionismo, pittura di genere e di paesaggio fra Sei e Settecento in Piemonte*, Turin 1993, Volumes I and II, passim A. Cifani, F. Monetti, “Flemish Taste and Italian Imagination: Pietro Domenico Ollivero (1679–1755), ‘a most virtuosic painter,’ chronicler of 18th-century Piedmontese civilization,” in: “Il Quirinale, Rivista d’arte e storia,” 5, 2007, pp. 103–12 A. Cifani, F. Monetti, The Collection of Paintings by Pietro Mellarède (1659–1730) and His Heirs at the Castle of Betton Bettonet in Savoy, in: “Essays and Memoirs on Art History,” no. 33, 2009 Institute of Art History of the Giorgio Cini Foundation in Venice, pp. 165–203 A. Cifani, F. Monetti, entry “Pietro Domenico Ollivero” in: *Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani*, vol. 79, Rome 2013, ad vocem