RESCHI, Pandolfo
Polish painter, active in Italy. While still very young he left Poland for Rome and Italianized his surname, Resch, to Reschi. In Rome Reschi was a pupil of Salvator Rosa and of Jacques Courtois, who inspired him to paint battle scenes and military campaigns. No works of his are known from this period. He lived in a house in Rome with the painter Pieter Mulier, called the Cavalier Tempesta (1637-1701), from 1663 to 1666. Later, except for a brief trip to Lombardy c. 1670, he settled in Tuscany, where he was a pupil of Livio Mehus and of Pietro Dandini.
In Florence he worked for the Marchese Gerini, who commissioned from him copies of the paintings in his gallery. The frescoes he painted in the loggia of the Villa della Petraia, Florence, depicting landscapes painted behind an illusionistic loggia probably date to this period, as may the Bull Hunt (Rome, Galleria Doria-Pamphili). Reschi then passed into the service of Cardinal Francesco de’ Medici, with whom he spent a period in Siena. The View of the Church of Fontebranda in Siena (c. 1675; private collection) and the View of the Villa di Lappeggi (private collection) probably date to this period. In these and in the View of the Arno and the ‘Cascine’ (private collection) he seems to anticipate the work of Gaspar van Wittel, painting with considerable topographical accuracy. Another canvas has been cited depicting a View of the Piazza and of the Palazzo Pitti (untraced) and crowded with more than 600 figures; this was commissioned from Reschi by Giacinto Marini of the Medici court.
The artist also executed copies of battle scenes by Jacques Courtois for Cardinal de’ Medici, including the signed Peace Treaty (private collection); here the landscape is worked in soft and delicate colours, silvery tones and summary brushstrokes. He also provided paintings of dogs for the Cardinal. The Riccardi family commissioned him to paint works depicting the four elements in the form of battle scenes (e.g. Encampment in a Storm, representing Air; Philadelphia, Museum of Art), and in 1691, in collaboration with Bartolomeo Bimbi and Anton Domenico Gabbiani, he decorated the mirrors of the gallery of the Palazzo Medici-Riccardi in Florence. Reschi painted the animals (goats, doves and other birds) in a refined naturalistic style influenced by the northern tradition. The canvas depicting scenes from the Life of Genevieve of Brabant (Florence, Depositi delle Gallerie) dates to the same period. Many landscape views worked in tempera or in watercolour date to the last decades of the century, including the Landscape with Waterfall (Rome, Palazzo Barberini), where the human figures move in a natural setting of great luminosity. The same style can be found in some watercolour landscapes now in Rome (Palazzo Corsini) and Florence (Biblioteca Marucelliana), featuring tall, twisted, leafy trees painted in the manner of Rosa. A Vase of Flowers (Florence, Depositi delle Gallerie) painted with the same silvery tones and soft brushwork has been attributed to him.
