Banditti at Rest

Bandits rest in a rocky landscape in this 1715 painting at the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Magnasco"s banditti scenes draw on a tradition extending back to Salvator Rosa, but his treatment strips away Rosa"s classical heroism, presenting outlaws as ragged, exhausted figures huddled in the wilderness. Catherine the Great and subsequent Russian rulers assembled the Hermitage"s rich collection of Italian Baroque painting, including several works by Magnasco.

The resting bandits are grouped in a shallow cave or rocky shelter, their dark clothing merging with the surrounding stone. Magnasco"s palette is characteristically narrow—dark browns, olive greens, and warm earth tones—with the only bright passages occurring where light catches a face or the glint of a weapon. The rock forms are rendered with broad, confident strokes, while the figures receive the nervous, flickering treatment that gives them their distinctive, spectral quality.