Flowers Still-life Volo 17th Century Paint Oil on canvas Old master Italt

1680-1699

Still life in a landscape with fruit and game Work of the late Roman Baroque of the late seventeenth / eaarly eighteenth century attributable to Giovanni Paolo Castelli, known as Spadino (Rome, 1659 - 1730) oil on canvas 62 x 76 cm., Framed 90 x 109 cm. An open-air setting, with a hilly landscape gash that opens into the distance in the central part, surrounds our beautiful canvas, which showcases a rich selection of game and fruit, arranged in the foreground near the point of view of the observer, occupying a large part of the visual field with their bright and festive colors. The style and quality of the work, like the pictorial technique of this still life, characterized by subtle luminous vibrations and a lively chroma, make it attributable to the Roman Giovanni Paolo Castelli, known as Lo Spadino (Rome, 1659 - 1730), one of the most important specialists of this pictorial genre of late Baroque Rome, which had a very successful career between the 17th and 18th centuries. Analyzing the rich and heterogeneous catalog of the Roman master, in fact, our canvas can be included among his rare works which, alongside a selection of fruit - among which stand out large melons, ripe figs, dark grapes and plums - we see a game advert, presumably as requested by a patron who loves hunting. Next to various birds, spoils of a profitable hunting trip, there is also a small green woodpecker, with the characteristic red spot on the head, and a nice rodent that terminates from behind the trunk. The painter abandons himself to a skilful and brilliant chromatic texture of the surfaces, through a pictorial material rendered with exceptional vibration in its luminous and 'tactile' body, fully respecting the taste of the full Roman Baroque. The quality appears excellent, distinguished by a skilful and brilliant chromatic texture of the surfaces, which appear almost vibrant thanks to a skilful drafting of the pictorial material. Inevitable and evident are the Flemish suggestions, which had influenced the Roman Baroque still life, in particular the work of Abraham Brueghel...

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Inscription on back of drawing: Laughter is mad, and reckless mirth— What does she in this weary earth? Should Wealth, or Fame, Our life employ. Death comes, our labour to destroy; ...