Giovanni Stanchi Active in Rome 1645-1672

Acquired in Spain by the father of the present owner, at the beginning of the 20th century.

These still lifes belong to a tradition of flower painting which flourished in Rome during the 1650s. The oval format and the precise brushwork reveal a clear debt to the Flemish artists Daniel Seghers and Jan Brueghel the Elder, whose work was represented in a number of important Roman collections by this time. Although the works of Pier Francesco Cittadini, who though Milanese is believed to have worked in Rome a little before 1650, are often confused with that of the Roman Stanchi Family, the present paintings can be securely attributed to Giovanni Stanchi, by comparison with a pair of documented oval flower paintings now in the Corridoio Vasariano, in the Galleria degli Uffizi, Florence, and in the Palazzo Pitti (see La Natura Morta a Palazzo e in Villa, Le Collezioni dei Medici e dei Lorena, exh. cat., Florence, Palazzo Pitti, 2 July - 31 October 1998, pp. 168-9, no. 84, reproduced).