Oil Painting, 'Brigands Attacking Wagoners', Johann Melchior Roos, German school, ca. 1685

Under the arch of a bridge, a group of brigands riding horses are attacking a wagon of which one wheel is stuck on the edge of a brook.

Bequeathed by John M. Parsons

Bequeathed by John M. Parsons, 1870

Historical significance: Formerly attributed to Johann Heinrich Roos (1631-85) and successively to Matthias Scheits (c. 1625/30-c. 1700), the date and definitive attribution of the painting was assessed by the discovery of a preparatory drawing formerly in the Glade Gallery, New Orleans, inscribed with 'J M Roos 1685 a la Hay'.
Johann Melchior Roos executed a number of works very close to that of his father along with animal pieces he produced as early as 1685 and in which he almost exclusively specialised at the end of his career.
This painting is characteristic of the Bamboccianti, a group of painters, mostly foreign, who painted in 17th-century Rome in the style of Peter van Laer called Il Bamboccio (ca.1592-1642), influenced by his small works representing genre subjects related to contemporary Italian life.

Italianates landscapes were particularly praised during the 17th century up to the early 19th century. The term conventionally refers to the school of foreign painters and draughtsmen (mostly of Dutch, Flemish, German or French origin) who were active in Rome for more than a hundred years, starting from the early 17th century. These artists produced mainly pastoral subjects bathed in warm southern light, set in an Italian, or specifically Roman, landscape. Particulalry representative of this tendency were the Bamboccianti, a group of painters who specialised in small genre subjects in the manner of Pieter van Laer, called il Bamboccio The taste for the Italianates continued undiminished into the 19th century. An early voice denouncing these artists was that of John Constable (1776-1837) and at the end of the century Italianates had lost favour oartly because of the rise of Impressionism and the appreciation of the Dutch national school of landscape expounded by such eminent critics as Wilhem von Bode, E.W. Moes and Cornelis Hofstede de Groot.

Johann Melchior Roos (1659-1731) was born in Frankfurt. He was the son and pupil of Johann Heinrich Roos (1631-1685) and subsequently attended the drawing academy at The Hague. Between 1686 and 1690 he lived in Rome and Tivoli. He later settled in Nuremberg and he became court painter to prince Bishop Lothar Franz von Schönborn in Frankfurt am Main.

This painting is a fine example of Johann Melchior Roos' compositions heavily influenced by his father's. It shows a coach attacked by brigands under a bridge with a distant landscape in the background. This type of paintings is characteristic of the Bamboccianti, active in Rome in the second half of the 17th century.

541-1870