Mattia Jona, Master Drawings and Prints, Japanese Prints - Piazzetta Guastalla 5, 20122 Milan, Italy, tel (+39) 02 8053315

FRANCESCO LONDONIO (Milan 1728 - 1783) COUNTRY WOMAN ON A DONKEY AND SHEPHERD
Etching; Scola 50. From a series, without title, of six subjects etched in Milan, Rome and Naples between 1760 and 1764. A very good impression of the third state of four, printed on blue paper, with large margins; minor flaws, generally in very good condition. To the platemark 243 x 187 mm.

Born in Milan to a patrician family of Spanish origin, Francesco Londonio was originally trained by the Lombard painters Ferdinando Porta and Giambattista Sassi. He learned the art of etching from Benigno Bossi. Apart from a few years in Rome and Naples (1762-65), he lived and worked in Milan for most of his career. Londonio made his reputation as a painter and printmaker of pastoral scenes and animal subjects; he belongs to a group of similarly minded artists from the same region involved with Lombard realism (Giacomo Ceruti and Francesco Cipper are two other examples) proving that patrons of the area were keen on this taste. None of his contemporaries, however, has the same stress on the sympathetic portrayal of animals and their coexistence with human beings in serenely simple compositions which are at the same time classical and realistic.