Vase of Flowers - Nicolas Baudesson (1611 - 1680)

Painting, oil on canvas, measuring 82 x 67 unframed and 98 x 82 cm with frame, by the painter Nicolas Baudesson ( Troyes 1611 - Paris 1680 ).

Born in Troyes to a family of artists Nicolas Baudesson, despite some returns to his homeland, grew up and developed his artistic talent in Rome, where he lived from 1632 and 1666 and where he was a pupil of Mario dei Fiori.

Baudesson's life and especially his art always remained anchored in a stark and truthful realism in stark contrast to the decorativism that was developing at the time; it was a professional choice that he wanted to depict flower vases with typical naturalistic dictates, even at the end of his career when he was able to combine the nascent effects of the Baroque with Caravaggio-like reminiscences evident in the skillful use of light and the accentuated naturalistic quest of his compositions.

Baudesson's stupendous bouquets are invested by an 'intense light source mostly in the upper left and are contained in historiated vases made often with a strong descriptive ability that rivals the botanical elements themselves.
A major characteristic of his concerns his skill in the dynamic construction of the work, that is, with the flowers erect upward, sometimes hanging downward and then flinging themselves forward and to the sides in a frenetic danceinvolving all the elongatedatio curled petals and especially the tulips.