Still Life with Flowers and Fruit - Lombard School, late 17th century

"Still Life with Vase of Flowers and Fruit"
Margherita Caffi (Cremona, 1647-Milan, 1710)
Oil on canvas
Lombard School of the late 17th century
Canvas cm. 45 x 50
Frame cm. 56 x 70
Excellent condition

This beautiful still life, depicting a Medici vase full of flowers together with various types of fruit, is to be included in the production of Margherita Caffi (Cremona, 1647 – Milan, 20 September 1710) an excellent Italian painter, famous for her floral compositions.
Certainly inspired by similar Nordic paintings, Caffi shows extreme freedom in the pictorial layout, with free and lively brush strokes, which present several analogies with the Venetian painting of Elisabetta Marchioni.
Caffi does not use landscape backgrounds as a setting for her still lifes and the bouquets of flowers are often arranged in two groups of different sizes and irregular shapes, which give an asymmetrical movement to the composition.
The botanical species radiate light and color, in contrast with the dark backgrounds of the interior and closed environments.
Unlike her Northern European contemporaries, she does not seem to show any scientific intention in describing the flowers, so much so that she even went as far as to invent species of flowers following the whim of her imagination.
We can certainly say that the canvas published here clearly expresses all the peculiarities of her always sumptuous and exuberant painting even in small canvases like in this case.

The painting is in excellent condition, professionally cleaned and relined. The gilded frame is of recent production.