Here we have a small but special goodies at the Doria-Pamphilj Gallery. Keep in mind that is it one of the best art galleries of Rome, a place where you can find surprises like this one. Do you know what is it? A painting on...a stone!

Yes, because the artists not only worked with canvas or wooden planks. Sometimes, as in this case, an artist could chose less common materials. And when it happened they were also difficult to use as pictorial support. Here we have a "Landscape of the Red Sea" by Antonio Tempesta, a renaissance artist who was born in Florence at the 1555, dying in Rome at the 1630. He was mainly a painter but he was also an engraver, so much that the Tempesta was able to match the two different art tecniques in order to create something that was really amazing. Imagine that the nickname of this master, who very active in Rome mainly during the reing of the pope Gregory XIII Boncompagni was "Tempestino". Antonio Tempesta was specialized not only in landscapes but also in scenes of battles, themes were he needes to add several bodies displayed in different poses and gestures. Moreover a battle is always a moment full of emotions, something that Antonio Tempesta was able to show us, provoking always, as in this case, a mix of strong feelings and sweet sensations. We can understand that we are looking at the Red Sea not only with the reddish and brownish effects found by the artist and made by the colourful pigments and stone surface. But we understand that we are looking at the Red Sea not only thanks to the colors and the landscapes, because the work of art is depicting an important episode from the Old Testament: the destruction of the Egyptian army while it was crossing the open water of the Red Sea, that suddenly covered it saving Moses and the Jews.

Antonio Tempesta used to paint biblical scenes, especially that ones of battles or something similar, but he loved very much etchings too. Try to notice the beauty of the colors, so vivid but at the same time harmonious, or try to admire the surface of the stone, which is polished with accuracy, making shiny the colors. But notice also the details, from the characters to the setting. Tempesta, this amazing master, was able to give us a little corner of the world, enclosed in a golden frame, which was really dreaming of the people who saw it. The will, in fact, to play landscapes, sometimes idealized, but sometimes also real, was a way as another to take his mind elsewhere, like the ancient romans with the paintings in the domus. A mind that in this case is tossing to a biblical episode realized in a masterful way by a great master. Another masterpiece of this wonderful art gallery, surely full of beauties and surprises (if you want to read something more about another surprise of this place click here).