Landscape with Horses at the Drinking Trough

This canvas was made as one half of a pair. Its companion is a busy river valley of monks and washerwomen, and this is the calmer of the two, built around horses led down to a drinking trough at the water's edge. The figures here carry very little weight, the herdsman and his animals small beside the trees and the reach of sky. Marco Ricci painted both around 1715, at a scale unusual for him, since most of his landscapes are small cabinet pieces you could hold in both hands. The two stayed together for generations in the Corniani Algarotti collection in Treviso, and reached the Accademia in Venice still as a pair.