An architectural capriccio with a Bacchanale and putti beneath columned arches, a town on a shore beyond

Possibly of French origin, Alberto Carlieri most likely spent his youth in Rome before pursuing his career in the same city: some of his work is recorded in the Palazzo Colonna and the Villa Paolina. He is mentioned as a pupil of the architect Giuseppe Marchi and the Jesuit artist Andrea Pozzo, under whom he would have been schooled in architectural painting and the use of quadratura. Carlieri’s decorative architectural canvasses, though, also owe much to his predecessors in the genre, Viviano and Nicolò Codazzi, Alessandro Salucci and, in particular, Giovanni Ghisolfi. David Marshall has established a corpus of his work, noting the tendency for many of his paintings to be frequently confused in the past with the work of the young Giovanni Paolo Panini.
We are grateful to Professor David Marshall for confirming the attribution.