Gaspare Lopez (Naples, ca. 1650 - Florence, 1732), Still life with flowers, plate and flask

Gaspare Lopez (Naples, ca. 1650 - Florence, 1732) Still life with flowers, plate and flask Oil on canvas, cm 48 x 69 With frame, cm 75 x 94 The still life described here should be attributed to the pictorial production of the Neapolitan school, which between the 17th and 18th centuries distinguished itself for the creation of paintings linked to this pictorial genre. Many painters ventured into this genre, inspired also by the visits and presence of French or Flemish colleagues in the city, even reaching the point of transmitting their art to close relatives and thus forming real workshops: this is the case of Giuseppe Recco, with his children Elena and Nicola Maria, Lorenzo and Giuseppe de Caro, sons of Baldassarre, or Francesco and Giuseppe Lavagna, whose works are very close to ours. Although there are many similarities with the setting, the subject and the luminous tone of Francesco Lavagna, the work appears closer to the production of another Neapolitan painter, namely Gaspare Lopes. The extreme harmony between the two is also found in their probable apprenticeship within the workshop of Andrea Belvedere, although Lavagna's name does not appear in the registers, while Lopes' does. The latter was influenced by the ornamental style of Monnoyer, a French painter and etcher with a Baroque taste, imported into the city of Naples by Jean Baptiste Doubisson, from whom he learned the frivolous taste for decorativism and the strong chromaticism of colors. In addition to his apprenticeship in his hometown, he had the opportunity to travel extensively throughout his life, visiting Venice, Florence, Rome but also Poland, as reported by the biographer Bernardo De Dominici. The outdoor setting, in an Arcadian-style garden with an airy background and characterized by the lively colors of the vegetation and the sky, are typical of his style, as is the disorderly arrangement of wicker baskets and bronze or terracotta vases containing flowers of various species or fruits, among which the broken watermelon, represented many times in his works, should be mentioned. Although Lavagna also creates still lifes in open spaces, the lateral perspective escape, the overlapping arrangement of the objects in the foreground, the more shining colors and the greater care in rendering details with a leaner and less pasty drafting allow greater affinity with Lopes' way of painting, in whose still lifes, moreover, he often depicts a tree or plant elements that laterally close the view of the landscape, almost to frame it in the distance; one of the most famous examples can be found in the Young Woman with Flowers in a Garden, at the Museum of San Martino in Naples.