Faustino Bocchi (Brescia 1659 - 1741) - Pair of small scenes

Pair of small oval paintings on ivory.

Oral communication by prof. Emilio Negro

Dimensions: 12x10cm painting - 25x22cm frame

Bocchi is, however, best known for his genre paintings called bambocciate, narrating scenes of jubilation, feasting, banquets, games, masks, fights teeming with imaginative and deformed beings, which contrasted with the splendid and opulent setting. His taste in painting partly derived from the founder of the Dutch school of bamboccianti, Pieter van Laer, but given the absence in Bocchi's works of a realistic aim, a descriptive commitment to popular customs and a tragic sense of life, while instead the humorous and satirical aspect predominates, as well as the grotesque and burlesque vein, he therefore appears to be a follower more than Francesco Monti, known as Brescianino, a painter of bambocciate.
Bocchi can be included in that typically Lombard school, located in the triangle of Milan, Bergamo and Brescia, which from the 16th to the 19th century produced a typically bizarre, ironic and imaginative trend, which starting from Arcimboldi and passing through Bocchi and Albrici ended at the threshold of Romanticism. Moreover, some art historians see inspirations and influences taken from the imaginative world of Hieronymus Bosch. As a figure painter, he painted two Saints and some Holy Stories in the church of the Pietà in Brescia and Stories of Saint Benedict in the church of Santo Spirito, also in Brescia, characterised by classical elements, light landscapes and luminous figures, as well as the Saint Mark of 1726 for the church of the Carità, remarkable for its colours.