Elisabetta Marchioni

Elisabetta Marchioni (active in Rovigo from the second half of the 17th century) "Ancient vase filled with flowers" and "Large vase of flowers" pair of oils on canvas. 80.5x60 cm Provenance: Lorenzelli Gallery Bergamo. Authenticity of Professor Dario Succi. This splendid pair of floral compositions is a typical and important work of Elisabetta Marchioni, the painter whose biographical details are unknown and who was active in Rovigo in the second half of the 17th century. Bartoli, in the book Le pitture, sculture, architetture di Rovigo (Venice 1793), after stating that the artist had died around 1700, offered this information: "Marchioni, a famous flower painter, deserves to be included in our series. She had a graceful brush and sought to imitate nature. The observer's eye remains so satisfied in seeing freshness and truth in her paintings that one would never detach oneself from her paintings. She made many of them, and almost all the houses in Rovigo have four, six, eight pieces by this painter. [...] The immense jumble of varied flowers are so elegantly and with good understanding arranged that they do not generate any confusion, but please and softly lure." The Pinacoteca of the Episcopal Seminary of Rovigo preserves, in addition to various vases of flowers, an altar frontal, painted for the Capuchin friars, with two Angels supporting the monstrance above a vase of flowers, with two others of larger dimensions on the sides depicting Ancient vases filled with flowers. One of the two vases, in 16th-century style, takes on an ornamental role that the artist also replicates in the first of the two paintings studied here. The Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo owns a still life of more complex composition, with flowers and fruit on various levels. The most evolved experiments of Elisabetta Marchioni foreshadow a development of 18th-century taste with floral displays cloaked in soft glazes, fringed touches, and delicate chromatic mixtures that anticipate the formal refinement of Francesco Guardi's flowers. The floral compositions in vases resting on stone bases constitute the closest link to the Guardi school and for this reason were frequently assigned to Francesco Guardi. The pair studied here, which had also been attributed to Guardi in the past, must be returned to Marchioni, being clearly linked to her inspiration and her style for the liquorish softness of the touch made of muted tones, for the vaporous lightness that anticipates the taste of Guardi, who differs for the darting material sign and the lively chromatism with subtle variations of color. Our valuable pendant, datable to the last years of the 17th century, is characterized by a material touch, by a soft, loose and expeditious style with luminous chromatic variations that stand out against the dark background. Dario Succi