Rural Crossroads, with Farm Buildings in Foreground 1734

Carlo Antonio Tavella rendered “Rural Crossroads, with Farm Buildings in Foreground” in pen and brown ink, sometime between the late 17th and early 18th century. Tavella, a Genoese artist, made a career out of idyllic landscapes. But we might consider the power structures inherent in the seemingly neutral genre. The concentration on the rural comes at a time when the aristocracy and the church still owned most of the land, and the vast majority of people were peasants, living a hardscrabble existence. This drawing presents a depopulated scene, one absent of the realities of labor. Instead, we see a romanticized and idealized version of the countryside, one that obscures the social and economic realities of the time. While seemingly benign, such scenes often reinforced a social hierarchy that favored the wealthy landowners, enabling them to turn a blind eye to the plight of the poor. Tavella's drawing offers a glimpse into a world of carefully constructed pastoral beauty, yet it reminds us to question the narratives that art can perpetuate.