Lombard School, 17th century, Still life with flowers

Lombard School, 17th century Still life with flowers Oil on canvas, 52 x 60 cm With frame, 67 x 76 cm The oil on canvas under examination, depicting a floral triumph emerging from a dark background, can be attributed stylistically and chromatically to the Lombard school of the 17th century. Still life originally arose as a naturalistic detail with various symbolic values, often inserted on the back of portraits or as a secondary detail in sacred scenes, only later acquiring its autonomy. Italy, and specifically Lombardy, was among the most important production centers that developed between the late 16th and early 17th centuries. The work is attributable to the hand of a Lombard artist who had the opportunity to see the studied compositions of artists such as Giuseppe Volò, known as Vicenzino (Milan, 1662 - documented until 1700), a Lombard painter who, following the example of Nuzzi, Mantovano, and the Flemish culture disseminated by Abraham Brueghel. Margherita Caffi, daughter of the painter of French origin Vincenzo Volò, from whom the aforementioned nickname probably derives, belonged to the family of the so-called Vicenzini. Born in Cremona in 1647, Margherita Caffi is best known for her compositions of fruits and flowers. She was admitted to the Academy of San Luca in Milan, along with her sister and an unidentified Lucrezia Ferraria, starting from February 2, 1697, according to a document found in the 2000s by Alberto Cottino. Among her patrons were the Archdukes of Tyrol (many of her paintings are still in Austria today), the Kings of Spain, and the Grand Dukes of Tuscany; in particular, her art was highly appreciated by Vittoria Della Rovere. The last years of her life were spent in Milan, where she gave rise to a flourishing local school of still life painters. Certainly inspired by similar Nordic paintings, Caffi shows, in the extreme freedom of the pictorial style, the free and lively brushstroke, influences on the Venetian painting of Elisabetta Marchioni and on the still lifes of the so-called Pseudo Guardi. In works such as the ovals preserved respectively in the Ala Ponzone Civic Museum of Cremona and in the Museum of Still Life, which also reflect the cut of the canvas, one finds stylistic features very similar to those present in the canvas in question: the dark background, the studied disorder of the plant elements, the variety of species, which confers a chromatic richness given by the wide range of colors.