Francesco Lavagna

Francesco Lavagna (Naples, 1684 – 1749) Still life with vase of flowers (4) Oil on oval canvas, 8.5 x 13.5 cm With frame, 18.5 x 22 cm The four Still lifes with vases of flowers under consideration can be associated with the production of the Neapolitan painter Francesco Lavagna (Naples, 1684 – 1749). There are few documents about the artist, and it has not yet been possible to define his artistic and existential trajectory with absolute certainty. Francesco Lavagna is often confused with Giuseppe Lavagna, with whom he almost certainly shares a family connection. The latter is mentioned by the biographer of Neapolitan painters, sculptors, and architects, Bernardo de Dominici, as a student of the great painter Andrea Belvedere. Francesco is a painter with a style particularly close to that of Gaspare Lopez (?- Naples, circa 1732), an important artist responsible for the execution of marvelous still lifes in the Neapolitan area. Since Lopez is recorded among the students of Andrea Belvedere, some scholars believe, based on the stylistic analysis of the works, that – even in the total absence of documentary evidence – Francesco Lavagna's training may have been the same. Lavagna's figure has recently been reconstructed in greater detail thanks to the discovery of two canvases that appeared on the antiquarian market in the early 1980s, one of which was clearly signed "Fran. Lavagna P". These works have allowed, thanks to the many stylistic references to canvases that have appeared on the market, to reconstruct, still partially, the artist's production history, which is configured as an elegant interpreter of the new pictorial trend of Neapolitan still life, closer to French taste, more decorative and imaginative. Lavagna favors compositions formed by cascades of flowers and fruit, usually set outdoors, accompanied by vases, jugs, ancient ruins, statues of female figures, and animals. Another of the painter's distinctive traits – also found in the series of paintings under consideration – is the addition of ceramics with delicate bluish coloring, not only a chromatic expedient for decorative purposes but also a testimony to the refined taste for artisanal production that arrived in the great ports of the southern Mediterranean, such as Naples. In this series of four canvases, small in size but with great technical and executive skill, the painter offers a series of particularly vivid and peculiar still life passages. In the graceful porcelain vases with blue decorations, the colorful flowers appear to be arranged with apparent randomness; among them, one can recognize large roses, white and lilac carnations with frayed petals, small white bellflowers, and tulips. The chromatic score based on the soft colors of blues, greens, and pinks, with flashes of intense reds, refers to other examples of the Neapolitan painter's production. The luminous and iridescent colors of the beautiful flowers that stand out, according to an extremely free scheme, in the four small vases with celestial decoration, recall, among others, the Still life with vase of flowers of the civic museum of Asola, near Mantua; the rapid and full-bodied brushstrokes that characterize the execution of the small oval canvases seem to reconnect directly to a work by the master currently part of a private collection in Bergamo.