The winter landscape that Giudici painted is located in the area surrounding Como, a city on the shores of the lake with the same name in Lombardia. It was founded with the status of municipality during the 1st century B.C. under the rule of Julius Caesar, who named it Novum Comum. Giudici employs the landscape genre to communicate his view of nature. The scene transmits a sensation of linear perspective, elaborated with the road as its principal vector. The narrative –if there is any– is silenced by the snow’s deafening sound: there are a scant few buildings, a couple of trees that stand here and there; not a single person in sight; only snow. The artist painted this snow-covered landscape as if he had stopped along his way and gone off to one side of the road in order to calmly contemplate the situation from that viewpoint. At the same time, it would seem that the viewer’s gaze is invited to slip into this world, which may not necessarily be more intimate, but is perhaps more internal.
The painting’s vanishing point is the road’s uncertain destination, the small village in the distance, and the mountains that protect the horizon interject a certain romantic nostalgia into the scene.
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