«Vedute di ricreazioni in villa» : François Simonot alias Monsù Francesco Borgognone e il paesaggio in quadratura nella Roma ottoboniana (1689-1740)

Between the end of the 17th and the first half of the 18th century Rome was still a crucial travel destination for artists from all over Europe, who came there attracted by the excellent job opportunities, also due to the wide presence of rich and powerful patrons. The local artistic context was then dominated by the Accademia di San Luca, whose hegemony was strongly opposed to the rising Congregation of the Virtuosi al Pantheon, which was joined by intellectuals and high prelates, as long as by many of the painters excluded from the academic ranks, among whom there were the landscapers. The research sheds new light on how the landscape painting established and raised, between Rome and Latium in the late Baroque Era, as decorative theme on monumental scale, in association with the painted architectures and with a constantly growing fascination for the trompe l’œil. In doing so, the work focuses on the life and career of the famous French landscape specialist François Simonot (1660-1731), also known as Monsù Francesco Borgognone, who arrived in Rome with his family as a kid. Starting from the documentary analysis of Simonot’s prolific career at the service of the most eminent families of the time, the essay also traces, from a wider point of view, the fortune and the codification of the ‘Saloni di vedute’ in Rome and in the suburban Villas, taking into account the pivotal connections between different clients and same groups of artists.