Paesaggio con rudere, castello e cavalieri

Bearing the artist’s signature and the year 1955 in the lower right-hand corner, this painting is considered the companion piece to another work of the title Paesaggio con ruderi, cavalli e cavalieri (cavallo che beve), also in the Bank’s collection. The stylistic traits are the same. The effect of the light that appears to originate in the background and move towards the dark trees in the foreground, is also very similar. This time, however, the ruins are placed in the centre, while behind them extends a vast horizon under an animated, luminous sky. Here too, the foreground is occupied by horsemen and other figures, while to the right several women are intent on washing their clothes in the natural spring that flows under a tree. At the centre, the figure of a horseman is framed in a great arched doorway that marks the point at which the horizontal and vertical planes of the painting meet. The open archway draws the eye towards the pale blue hills in the distance, while to the left are a cluster of towers outlined against the sky, suggesting a walled town or fortress. At that time De Chirico’s imagination was fired by chivalric novels, in particular by Cervantes’ Don Quixote, and was open to the vast spaces he imagines being crossed by the epic knights. The painting is of notable quality and effect despite its distance from the artist’s metaphysical genre.
Here, too, are similarities with the sets painted by De Chirico for the staging of Don Quixote at the “Maggio Musicale Festival” in Florence in 1952.