A Storm off a Rocky Coast

Carlo Bonavia was part of the mainstream Neapolitan vedute tradition, which was popularised by Salvator Rosa in the seventeenth-century. However, Bonavia was influenced by the French view painter Claude-Joseph Vernet. He may have met the French artist during the latter’s sojourn in Naples in the 1740s, and it is certain that he would have seen Vernet’s large Italianate landscapes in Neapolitan and Roman private collections. The present painting recalls the stormy seascapes by Vernet.