Circle of Giovanna Garzoni,
 
Italian 1600-1670-
 
Still life of figs on a...

Circle of Giovanna Garzoni,

Italian 1600-1670-

Still life of figs on a table with a butterfly and bee;

bodycolour heightened with white on vellum laid down on panel, bears inscription and number (on the reverse), 16 x 24.2 cm.

Provenance: Anon Sale, Phillips, Bayswater, 10 June 2001, lot 319 [Sold for £4,400 hammer].

Exhibited: TEFAF, Maastricht, 2002 (as Circle of Giovanna Garzoni).

Note: The present work is very much in the style of still lifes by female Italian Baroque artist Giovanna Garzoni, who gained renown for her botanical subjects, and the precision and balance with which they were conceived. Her rediscovery can be traced back only relatively recently to the great exhibition of Italian still life paintings held in Naples, Rotterdam and Zurich in 1964. Since then, the research of many scholars has uncovered the well-documented life of an outstanding female artist whose works were highly prized at the courts of Florence, Naples, Rome, Turin, and beyond the Alps to France. More recently, her paintings have began to be considered to have both female bodily associations and proto-feminist sentiments. The present subject of figs and insects were those treated by Garzoni herself on a number of occasions, and the anonymous artist here was surely looking at Garzonis compositions see, for example, Plate of figs in Anon. sale, Christies, New York, 6 April 2006, lot 56, and Two butterflies and another insect in Anon. sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 22 October 2019, lot 54. Like the present work, Garzonis fruit and vegetables were often situated atop a brown surface and against a plain background, clearly not wishing to detract viewers' attention from the subject.