Still life of flowers and fruit with a landscape in the background and a small goldfinch in flight

Oil painting on canvas

cm. 68 x 90

with frame cm. 86 x 107

This canvas, of excellent pictorial quality and state of conservation, shows the viewer a rich selection of flowers and fruits arranged outdoors, some resting directly on the ground, others in a vase or basket. On the left of the composition there is a fascinating view of the landscape, where there is a small Italian-style village perched.

The style of the work, datable to the end of the seventeenth century and distinguished by a material drafting with soft features and a bright color, facilitates its assignment to an author of the Roman school, from the circle of the great Abraham Brueghel (Antwerp 1631 - Naples 1697) , Flemish by origin but active in Italy for most of his career, first in Rome then in Naples, one of the European protagonists of the still life genre in the second half of the seventeenth century.

We owe to Brueghel the spread of a new compositional model for still life, which in a short time led to transforming a genre into a decorative and baroque sense that until then had retained the strongly realistic imprint that had marked its origins. It is precisely with Brueghel, in fact, that the "exhibitions" of autumn and summer fruit are combined with colorful flowers, highlighted by a clear light and bright colors, and arranged outdoors, against the backgrounds of landscapes or gardens that mid-century had characterized Roman compositions.

This is how, as we can observe from our beautiful canvas, the grapes, black and white figs, peaches, plums, apples, pears and the open pomegranate, gracefully approach the various floral types, some arranged neatly in a vase, others thrown on the ground.

We know that Abraham Brueghel arrived in Rome around 1659, when he was already an established painter, after his apprenticeship in Antwerp with his father Jan Brueghel II, given his belonging to the famous dynasty of painters. It is not surprising that in a short time he became a real point of reference not only for the high-ranking Roman commission, but also for many authors who competed to collaborate with him or simply to study his works closely.

An analysis of the quality, of the drafting and of the illustrative aspects themselves, in particular, allows us to be able to detect strong points of contact with the works of some authors active in Rome and gravitating around the great Flemish master, among these, Franz Werner Tamm ( Hamburg 1658 - Vienna 1724) or Cristian Berentz (Hamburg 1658 - Rome 1722), although the name that seems most interesting to us is that of the Roman Giovanni Paolo Castelli, known as Spadino (Rome, c. 1659 - 1730). The baroque exuberance but with softened colors and less vigorous shadows and the outdoor setting are typical features of his creations, which we find in the proposed canvas, borrowed from the examples of Brueghel of which he was a great follower.