Attr. Jacobus or Iacomo Victor (Amsterdam 1640 ca. - 1705)
Still life with birds
Oil on canvas, cm 112 x 133
The still life examined here constitutes a rare example of the contemporary presence of live and dead animals in a single composition. Different ornithological species are neatly arranged on two rocky levels, reproduced with the utmost fidelity and adherence to reality. Mallards, pigeons, sparrows and a partridge perched on their backs can be recognized. The soft coats with different chromatic tones, with the characteristic streaks and color spots, together with the precise investigation of the various ornithological types, denote an observation of the real data typical of the seventeenth-century Flemish tradition. Another mallard, this time alive, seems to have just landed on the rock, almost observing the rich composition by moving its neck. Its characteristic colors, the bright green of the head and upper neck, the yellow of the beak and the orange of the legs characterize the painting and capture the viewer's attention. The flight of the dove in the foreground, seen from above, is splendid, the virtuosic pose and the luminosity of its feathers, in an elegant modulation of grays tending to white, denote the stylistic quality of this work. It was probably made by a Flemish artist working in Italy in the second half of the seventeenth century: close analogies can be found with the hunting scenes of Jacobus Victor. The author of the painting reveals a smoothed and light-soaked touch, the soft and delicate chromatic choices played on the tones of whites, grays and browns, as in the figure of the dove with spread wings, with the intense whites of its plumage, stand out vividly from the background the figures represented.
Precise and refined color selections distinguish and qualify the painter through an intensity of light that permeates and invigorates his subjects, the pigeons in particular, favorite creatures or at least favorite actors of his scenes. We find them, for example, in the specimens of the Pinacoteca of Cremona, one of which, with Three pigeons on a plane, fully reveals the soft pictorial liveliness and an effective luminosity that floods every detail with gray and blue tones, cold but delicate, which announce us the encounter with the atmosphere of his land.