LOSE Federico & Carolina Viaggio Pittorico nei Monti de Brianza Corredato di Alguni Cenni Storico-Statistici diviso in Ventiquattro Vedute.

Bobins IV, 1449.

A magnificent illustrated guide to the province of Brianza between Milan and Lake Como in Italy, finely engraved in aquatint and exceptionally coloured and highlighted in gum arabic by Federico and Carolina Lose. 

Friedrich Lohse (Görlitz, 1776 – Milan, 1833) and Karoline von Schlieben (Dresden, 1784 – Milan, 1837) represent a classic archetype in the History of Art, namely that of a love affair between a man and a woman cemented by the same passion for art: a passion that for them was to all intents and purposes Romantic, in the full sense of the word.

A relationship reminiscent of that of so many couples of young artists who meet in a city of art to study at the Academy, and from that acquaintance a serious affair is born. Federico and Carolina Lose, who really lived their whole lives in love and together until their death in Milan, united by the same passion for art.

Friedrich (son of a landowner from Saxony) and Karoline (daughter of a Dresden Court of Appeal councillor) were two young people from a good family, whose parents could afford the luxury of starting them off at the Academy of Art, and not by chance precisely in Dresden, a city considered to be the Florence of the North. They met at one of the most turbulent times in European history, with the French Revolution having just taken place and Napoleon’s dazzling star in soliloquy also ruling the German lands after the victory at Austerlitz.

A serious relationship was born between the two and that love lasted: Friedrich Lohse moved to Paris to perfect his artistic training and she decided to leave Prussia and join him. In Paris they were married and from Paris they left in 1805, following the Viceroy of the Kingdom of Italy Eugene Beauharnais, Napoleon’s stepson, for Milan, where Friedrich temporarily dropped his lofty artistic ambitions and settled for a job at the French Printing Office, while his wife Caroline adapted to sewing textile decorations. With the fall of Napoleon Bonaparte and the end of the Kingdom of Italy in 1814, the change of regime, which threw many Italian intellectuals in the Lombardy-Venetia region into crisis and made them reluctant to change their colours, probably played into the hands of the Lohse couple because of their Germanic origin, which allowed them to clear their names and continue working even after the arrival of the Austrians.
The Lohse family therefore decided to stay permanently in Milan, Italianized their surname to Lose and devoted themselves passionately to the art of printmaking, immediately dividing their tasks: drawing (him) and engraving (her) Lombard views in their house on the Naviglio, at 299 Contrada San Damiano. Federico and Carolina Lose thus found their artistic style and identity, certainly influenced by the gradual change in European taste from Neoclassicism to the new art more in the Romantic taste, especially in the iconographic representation of nature and truth.

The artistic partnership between the two Lose immediately began to work well: in 1816, the first aquatints drawn by Federico and engraved by Carolina entitled ‘Le belle bellezze pittoriche di Milano‘ (The Pictorial Beauties of Milan) were published by the printer Artarìa, followed by the prints of the ‘Viaggio pittorico e storico ai tre laghi Maggiore, di Lugano e Como‘ (Pictorial and Historical Journey to the Three Lakes of Maggiore, Lugano and Como), published by the publisher Bernucca between 1816 and 1821. These were already original panoramic views of great emotional impact, which began to make the Lose artists known among the discerning and select public of the nobility and the nascent Milanese-Lombard upper middle class.

It was, however, with a lesser-known pictorial subject of the Lombard lakes, namely Brianza, that the Lose couple really hit the jackpot and placed themselves at the centre of attention: probably thanks to the suggestions and tales of Milanese friends, they decided in the summer of 1822 to make a pictorial foray between the Ville di Delizia and the wooded hills of Brianza, also with the advantage of being a short distance from Milan.

From this four-handed tour came a collection of prints that – to paraphrase today’s social media – were clicked on for their enormous initial diffusion among the middle and upper classes, with such a choral success then, that they would soon overflow into popular art. That is, not for the select few eager for the unique copy, but for the general public.

Having made the preparatory drawings directly en plein air in the field, in the autumn and winter of 1822 Carolina patiently dedicated herself to the subsequent engraving and colouring of them, and the following year, in 1823, the Lose presented themselves to collectors and print lovers with their ‘Viaggio pittorico nei Monti di Brianza’ (Pictorial journey through the Brianza Mountains), an extraordinary collection of etchings in aquatint or hand-coloured, picturesque views of a truly Romantic taste and therefore completely new to the Milanese public: a graphic work of which they were not only the authors, but also the publishers. With this Pictorial Journey, Brianza began to become the tourist dream of all Milanese, just outside the city.

Buoyed by the enormous success of their Brianza graphic work, in 1824 Federico and Carolina Lose subsequently published a new album of 16 watercolours: the ‘Viaggio pittorico e storico al Monte Spluga da Milano a Coira‘ (Pictorial and Historical Journey to Mount Spluga from Milan to Chur), the first illustrated guide dedicated to the new tourist route between Lombardy and Europe, after the opening of the new Spluga road, a road that has now become the well-known SS 36 state road from the Grigioni side to Valchiavenna and Milan. After this further artistic endeavour, which did not, however, make an encore with the greater and more enduring success of the Brianza prints, the vein of the Lose partnership came to an end, not least because of the family obligations associated with raising five children: Ernesta, Federico Spiridione, Elisabetta, Carola Augusta and Ferdinando Marco Aurelio. Federico and Carolina Lose both died relatively young, in the Milan that had welcomed them as their new Dresden: in 1833 at the age of 57 he and – only a few years later – in 1837 at the age of 53 she.” On line : Il tour dei Lose, https://sites.google.com/view/tourdeilose/ita

A beautifully coloured copy of a very rare work.