Figures in a Tree-lined Avenue

A 1692 Chigi inventory lists two paintings, the Rural Scene (see at Angeluccio) and the Figures in a Tree-lined Avenue and indicates that they are the product of a collaboration between Angeluccio, who painted the landscape, and Michelangelo Cerquozzi, who painted the figures.

Though Miel and van Bloemen also painted figures for Angeluccio’s landscapes, the majority of his collaborations were with Michelangelo Cerquozzi. Angeluccio seems to have furnished background landscapes for his fellow “Bamboccianti” much as Viviano Codazzi executed architectural backgrounds for them. A hypothesis has even been advanced that the nickname “Angeluccio” is derived from the closeness of this artist to “Michele Angelo” Cerquozzi. The fruits of this collaboration entered into numerous important Roman collections in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the inventories of which either report the pictures as “by Angeluccio with figures by Cerquozzi”, or as landscapes by Angeluccio alone.