19th-century Roman painter, Still life with cherubs, floral festoons, and herm with faun, oil painting on canvas

19th-century Roman painter Still life with cherubs, floral festoons, and herm with faun Oil on canvas, H 78 x W 95 cm without frame, H 122.00 x W 106 x D 8 cm with frame Contemporary octagonal frame. The object is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and expertise (attached at the bottom of the page) The work, painted in oil on canvas, with an octagonal shape, depicts a still life with three cherubs or cupids playing with floral festoons in a wooded environment where a herm with faun is placed and, on the left, a large neoclassical marble vase, adorned with bucrania with festoons and a large floral composition. The artist uses a bright chromatic palette in which yellows, reds, and blues are well balanced, enlivening the floral garlands. The herm derives from one of the earliest archaic forms of representation of the dwellings of a divinity, which here can be identified with the faun, a figure of Roman mythology, a deity of nature, the countryside, flocks, and woods. He was a powerful and wild god, depicted with goat legs and horns, hairy paws and hooves, while the bust is human, the face bearded, and with a mischievous expression. He wandered through the woods, often chasing nymphs, while playing and dancing. He is one of the oldest Italic deities, derived from the god Pan of Greek mythology. Pan was a non-Olympic deity, with the appearance of a satyr, linked to forests and nature. He was the shepherd god, the god of the countryside and pastures. In some myths, he is described as the oldest god of the Olympians: he drank milk with Zeus from Amalthea, raised Artemis' dogs, and taught Apollo the art of divination. The painting dates back to the 19th century, the work of an author from the Roman area. The canvas is close to similar compositions, with flowers and cherubs, which became established from the mid-17th century in Rome to find wide diffusion throughout the first half of the 18th century, in the full Baroque era. Numerous authors proposed this type of representation, where chubby cherubs and cupids play and support prosperous garlands and compositions of flowers and fruit. Similarly, the herm with faun, or with other divinities, and mythological figures around which the cupids frolic, is often found alongside. The painting dates back to the 19th century, the work of an author from the Roman area. The canvas is close to similar compositions, with flowers and cherubs, which became established from the mid-17th century in Rome to find wide diffusion throughout the first half of the 18th century, in the full Baroque era. Numerous authors proposed this type of representation, where chubby cherubs and cupids play and support prosperous garlands and compositions of flowers and fruit. Similarly, the herm with faun, or with other divinities, and mythological figures around which the cupids frolic, is often found alongside. Quite common, as demonstrated by the works proposed here for comparison, is painting executed by four hands: the cherubs and figures are made by one artist, while another takes care of the depiction of flowers and still lifes. An example is that of Mario de' Fiori, pseudonym of Mario Nuzzi (Penna San Giovanni, January 19, 1603 – Rome, November 14, 1673), who owes his nickname precisely to his famous compositions of flowers, a genre in which he was a great specialist. Mario de' Fiori collaborated with eminent Baroque painters active in Rome, such as Filippo Lauri (Rome 1623 – 1694) or Bernardino Mei (Siena, October 1612 – Rome, 1676). The four canvases of Palazzo Chigi with the Seasons are famous, seeing the collaboration of Mario de' Fiori with Lauri, with Mei and with Carlo Maratta (Camerano, May 15, 1625 – Rome, December 15, 1713). Carlo Maratta (Camerano 1625 – Rome 1713) was a central figure in Roman and Italian painting in the second half of the seventeenth century; during his life, he was celebrated as the greatest painter of his time, also influencing a large part of the artistic production of the following century. He often collaborated with some important workshops, completing their floral compositions. Among these, in addition to that of the aforementioned Mario Nuzzi, are those of Giovanni and Niccolò Stanchi and that of Franz Werner von Tamm (1658–1724), a painter active in Rome between 1685 and 1695. Among the greatest examples are the magnificent mirrors, commissioned by Lorenzo Onofrio between 1660 and 1670 for the Palazzo Colonna, then moved in 1740 to the Grande Galleria. Carlo Maratta took care of the creation of the cherubs, while Mario de' Fiori and Giovanni Stanchi painted the flower garlands. The two still life painters also made use of studying from life in creating the great variety of flowers, taking inspiration from those grown in the large garden of the Palace. As for Niccolò Stanchi (1623/1690), the younger brother who owned the workshop after Giovanni's death, the mirrors in Palazzo Borghese, executed in 1675 in collaboration with Ciro Ferri (1634/1689), are remembered. In conclusion, the painting in question is to be considered a prime example of the vast fortune that this genre of painting had in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and that continued until the beginning of the nineteenth century, still commissioned by collectors who wanted to decorate their palaces with this kind of paintings with carefree and graceful subjects. The work has canvas and frame, as well as a very valuable octagonal box frame, from the Baroque era. It is possible that the author of the painting used a seventeenth-century canvas readjusted and consistent with the typically Baroque subject. This may have occurred on the commission of the client, in an era such as the nineteenth century, when there was a revival of the Baroque and Rococo at the European level. The painter, as noted, is clearly inspired by the great masters of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries of the genre, in particular, for the composition and cherubs, by Carlo Maratta and Mario de' Fiori and, probably, belongs to that category of florists who in Rome knew considerable fortune in the furnishing of manor houses, especially after the unification of Italy. A nineteenth-century artist, therefore, but of great quality able to recreate and reinterpret with mastery the great Roman seventeenth-century art; an artist with excellent academic foundations who creates compositions with lively and bright colors and remarkable compositional balance. Unfortunately, the florists of nineteenth-century Rome have not yet been the subject of careful studies and we hope that they may be so soon in order to clarify figures and cultural paths. Carlotta Venegoni