Francesco Lavagna (Naples, 1684 – 1749), Still life with vase of flowers

Francesco Lavagna (Naples, 1684 – 1749)

Still life with vase of flowers

(4) Oil on oval canvas, 8,5 x 13,5 cm

With frame, 18,5 x 22 cm

The four Still Lifes with Vase of Flowers examined can be assimilated to the production of the Neapolitan painter Francesco Lavagna (Naples, 1684 – 1749). There are few documents on the artist, whose artistic and existential parable has not yet been defined with absolute certainty. Francesco Lavagna is often confused with Giuseppe Lavagna, with whom he almost certainly shares a family bond: the latter is cited by the biographer of Neapolitan painters, sculptors and architects Bernardo de Dominici as a pupil of the great painter Andrea Belvedere. Francesco is a painter with a style particularly close to that of Gaspare Lopez (?- Naples, around 1732), an important artist responsible for the execution of wonderful still lifes in the Neapolitan area. Since Lopez is recorded among the pupils of Andrea Belvedere, some scholars believe, based on the stylistic analysis of the works, that – despite the total absence of documentary evidence – the educational path of Francesco Lavagna may have been the same. Lavagna's figure has recently been reconstructed in greater detail thanks to the discovery of two canvases that were sold on the antiques market in the early XNUMXs, one of which was clearly signed "Fran. Lavagna P". These works have allowed, thanks to the many stylistic references to canvases that appeared on the market, to reconstruct, still partially, the artist's production history, which is configured as an elegant interpreter of the new pictorial trend of Neapolitan still life, closer to French taste, more decorative and imaginative. Lavagna favours compositions made up of cascades of flowers and fruit, usually set outdoors, accompanied by vases, jugs, ancient ruins, statues of female figures and animals. Another of the painter's distinctive traits - also found in the series of paintings under examination - is the addition of ceramics with a delicate blue colour, not only a chromatic expedient with a decorative purpose but also evidence of the refined taste for artisanal production that arrived in the large ports of the southern Mediterranean, such as Naples.

In this series of four canvases, small in size but with great technical and executive skill, the painter offers a series of particularly vivid and peculiar still life pieces. In the pretty porcelain vases with blue decorations, the multicoloured flowers appear to be arranged with apparent randomness; among them we can recognise large roses, white and lilac carnations with frayed petals, small white bellflowers and tulips. The chromatic score based on the soft colours of blues, greens and pinks, with splashes of intense reds, recalls other examples of the Neapolitan painter's production. The bright and iridescent colours of the beautiful flowers that stand out, according to an extremely free scheme, in the four vases with blue decorations, recall, among others, the Still life with a vase of flowers in the civic museum of Asola, near Mantua; the rapid and full-bodied brushstrokes that distinguish the execution of the small oval canvases seem instead to be directly connected to a work by the master currently part of a private collection in Bergamo.