Still Life With Vanitas, Italian school of the 17 th century

Francesco Noletti known as the Maltese (Malta 1611-Rome 1654) Workshop/circle of
Still life with musical instruments, toys, armour, textiles and precious objects

Oil on canvas (52 x 78 cm. - in frame 71 x 102)

This painting, of beautiful scenic effect, depicts a still life composed of a rich display of precious objects, arranged with an apparent disorder, one part on a table and the other on the floor, all theatrically behind a hanging drape from which tassels swing.

Among the objects, our author has reproduced we can see parts of a parade armour with gold borders, jugs and plates in precious metals, musical instruments including a tambourine with its sticks and a stringed instrument, a lute and a score. Finely chiselled, embossed and gilded precious metal vessels and a chessboard complete the unique composition.

It is very important to understand the meaning of these images, which, in addition to the aesthetics of the decoration, are imbued with allegorical values, so much so that they can be interpreted as refined Vanitas. It is a representation that invited meditation on the futility of vain glory (here symbolised by the weapons), pleasures (the musical instruments) and earthly riches (the precious objects).

The pictorial characters declare that the work was executed during the 17th century by a good artist of the Italian school, attentive to details and precious stylistic touches derived from the teachings of the best Flemish masters of the time and previous generations.

There are also clear post-Caravaggesque Roman influences visible in the robust contrasts of lume and the dense and overflowing pictorial material: all reasons that allow the painting to be assigned to Francesco Fieravino known as the Maltese.

Active mainly in the city of Rome, the painter was extremely prolific and enjoyed extraordinary success with the collectors of the time, by virtue of his excellent creativity and invention of singular posed natures. His presence and the notoriety he achieved can be seen in the many compositions that have been returned to him in recent times, which were housed in the most important public and private collections, such as those of the Albani, Barberini, Chigi and Colonna families.

Adhering above all to Baroque ideals of composition, the artist produced an exceptional mass of paintings enriched with carpets and curtains covering tables and shelves, armour, flowers and fruit arranged in bulk with a few precious objects, musical instruments and framed pictures or mirrors.

His style, exuberant and opulent, profoundly influenced countless artists, such as Giovanni Domenico Valentini, Carlo Manieri and Antonio Tibaldi, with whom his works will often be mistaken.

Almost as a tribute to their former destination, many of Maltese's works today adorn private collections; however, one may recall the two examples in the Muzeum Narodowe w Kielcach, located in the Bishops' Palace in Cracow, as well as the Still Life with a Helmet in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg.