The following condition report is provided by Sarah Walden, who is an external specialist and not an employee of Sotheby's. This painting has a recent lining and stretcher, both firm and strong, with the impasto retained. The restoration is also recent and well integrated, perhaps carried out for the Strozzi Exhibition in Genoa in 1995. There is a sequence of vertical creases across the surface, presumably from rolling, then partly crushing, the canvas. The upper edge was rather more damaged, perhaps from standing the rolled painting on its end. There are regular vertical lines of retouching visible under ultra violet light, with one slanting diagonal running down from the top of the central flowers across to the white roses on the left. The central vertical retouching runs through the central pink roses. The careful retouching avoids overlapping original paint but links the flakes fractured by the creases. Despite these fairly frequent accidental damages there is scarcely any wear, with the original brushwork remaining largely vividly intact. The only areas with some thinness are the fruit in the foreground. The dark ground is also visible in the background in places where just a fine film was swept across the canvas, growing more transparent with age and more susceptible to the bending of the canvas. However the characteristic flamboyant treatment of the flowers, and of the painting overall, survives remarkably intact. This report was not done under laboratory conditions.
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