Cavalier and Shepherd

Francesco Casanova

Oil on canvas

Metropolitan Museum of Art

A mounted cavalier in a plumed hat gestures toward the horizon while a weathered shepherd, leaning on his staff and doffing his cap, pauses with his flock of woolly sheep along a dusty country road. Casanova, the Venetian-born painter and younger brother of the famous memoirist Giacomo Casanova, built his reputation on dynamic equestrian and pastoral scenes rendered with a loose, atmospheric brushwork indebted to Dutch Italianate painters like Philips Wouwerman. Billowing clouds and a hazy blue sky lend the composition a theatrical, almost cinematic depth, while the distant riders and rolling hills reinforce the sense of an unhurried rural world. This charming genre scene would bring a touch of pastoral elegance and old-world horsemanship to any wall.