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Plateau in Bugey

Antonio Fontanesi

Plateau in Bugey is an oil on canvas by the Italian landscape painter Antonio Fontanesi, dated 1859–1860. It belongs to the Turin Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art (Galleria Civica di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea), so a trip to Turin is the way to see it in person.

Where to see it

Plateau in Bugey is held by the Turin Civic Gallery of Modern and Contemporary Art (Galleria Civica di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea) in Turin, Italy. Works in a permanent collection are not always on display, because galleries rotate their hangs and works can be in storage or under conservation. Before you visit, check the museum's official website or contact the museum to confirm the painting's current display status. Quoting the museum's record number for the work, 3964, along with its Italian title, Altopiano nel Bugey, may help staff locate it for you.

What to look for in person

A landscape named for a real place

The title ties the picture to a specific location, the plateau of Bugey, recorded in Italian as Altopiano nel Bugey. That makes this a view of somewhere real rather than an invented scene. In front of the canvas, look at how the painter conveys the open ground of a plateau: where the horizon sits, how far the land appears to stretch, and how much of the picture is given to the sky. Notice whether your eye is drawn back into depth or kept close to the foreground.

Oil on canvas, close up and from a distance

Fontanesi painted this work in oil on canvas. Oil paint can be laid on thinly or built up, blended softly or left as visible strokes. Start close and examine the surface: where the paint looks thin, where it is heavier, and how the edges between land, vegetation and sky are handled. Then step back a few paces and let the individual marks merge into light and atmosphere. Moving between these two distances is a simple way to see how a landscape painter turns paint into space.

A date given as a span: 1859–1860

The museum's record dates the painting to 1859–1860 rather than to a single year. Date ranges like this appear often in collection records when the exact year of completion is not documented. For a visitor, the date offers a useful frame: this is a mid-nineteenth-century landscape. If other works by Fontanesi are on view during your visit, compare them with this one and look for shared habits in how he handles light, distance and the shape of the land.

About the painting

Plateau in Bugey, known in Italian as Altopiano nel Bugey, is a landscape painting by Antonio Fontanesi. It is executed in oil on canvas and dated 1859–1860. The work belongs to the Galleria Civica di Arte Moderna e Contemporanea in Turin, the city's civic gallery of modern and contemporary art, where it is catalogued under the identifier 3964.

The title tells you the subject before you see the picture: an upland plateau in Bugey. Knowing that it depicts a particular place changes how you look at it. Instead of reading the scene as an ideal or imaginary landscape, you can treat it as a record of terrain, light and weather as a painter observed and composed them. Ask yourself what the artist chose to put at the centre of attention, and what he left at the edges or in shadow.

Because the painting is in oil, much of its effect depends on surface and tone. Look at the range between the lightest and darkest areas, and at how the sky relates to the ground beneath it. Landscape paintings reward slow viewing: give the canvas a few minutes, and details of texture and gradation that are not obvious at first glance tend to emerge.

Practical note for visitors: the collection's record number, 3964, and the Italian title are both useful if you want to look the work up in the museum's catalogue or ask gallery staff about it. As with any museum piece, confirm on the official website that the painting is on display before you plan your trip around it.

Key facts

More by Antonio Fontanesi

• April
• Old Market of Florence
• Cloud

Sources

• Europeana