Still Life with Basket of Flowers - Laura Bernasconi ( 17th -18th Century)

Painting oil on canvas measuring 49 x 36 cm without frame and 60 x 70 cm with a beautiful frame depicting a basket of fruit by the painter Laura Bernasconi known as Laura dei Fiori (active in Rome at the turn of the 17th and early 18th century).

This qualitative ‘Vaso di fiori’ (vase of flowers), in which a lush grouped floral selection, in which anemones, carnations and roses stand out, overflows from a wicker basket, is truly refined and very fine.

The mimetic objectification of the individual parameters is entrusted to a meticulous linear action and vivid colour ranges, enhanced by the light source that strikes the group directly, leaving the parameters set back in backlight on the left and those on the right in complete penumbra. An expositional approach that is, however, mechanically executed, while denouncing a basic first lesson in realism, now clearly employed with eminently decorative intentions, brilliantly achieved even if the refined lightness of the petals appears in some cases - the anemones and tulips - slightly hardened with effects that verge on the crystalline.

The aims of a ‘noble ornamental decoration’ are brilliantly achieved, thanks to a perfect mastery of a compositional scheme that had already been tried and tested in the second half of the 17th century by all the specific schools in Italy, following in the direct footsteps of Mario Nuzzi, who had in turn drawn on the 16th-century tradition of the Netherlands. In fact, the result appears to be in line with those of the still mysterious - more for his precise identity than for his now abundantly focused works - Francesco Mantovano, and also with several examples assigned to the Stanchi family, ending with the aforementioned ‘progenitor’ of this subject in Italy, with whom the author of this ‘Vaso di Fiori’ even has a direct relationship.
                       
The notion that she was the best among Mario's pupils, so much so that she even took his appellation, was echoed by Onofrio Giannone and later by Abbate Lanzi (he says of her that ‘best of all she imitated him’), De Marchi writes that, specifying Bernasconi's ‘drift’ from an original realist objectification to a baroque adherence, in step with the conventional decorative demands of the Roman aristocracy, he pointed out her typical floral morphology, which made possible new identifications, such as those illustrated in his cited essay. To which I believe that, according to the above considerations, the ‘Flower Vase’ examined here is of pertinent relevance.