Bernardo Strozzi

Genoa, Palazzo Ducale, Bernardo Strozzi, 6 May - 6 August 1995, no. 66.

B. Suida Manning, 'Bernardo Strozzi as Painter of Still Life', in Apollo, vol. 278, April 1985, pp. 250-51, reproduced plate XVI;
P. Pagano et al. (eds), La pittura del '600 a Genova, Milan 1988, unpaginated, reproduced fig. 539;
A. Cottino, 'Bernardo Strozzi', in La natura morta in Italia, vol. I, Milan 1989, p. 119;
D. Sanguineti in E. Gavazza, et al. (eds), Bernardo Strozzi, exhibition catalogue, Genoa 1995, pp. 230-31, cat. no. 66, reproduced in colour;
C. Manzitti, Bernardo Strozzi, Turin 2013, p. 241, cat. no. 384, reproduced.

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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It is only quite recently that Bernardo Strozzi's career as a still-life painter has come to be studied and in part understood. However, there remain considerable areas of confusion over the artistic development of this part of his oeuvre, in part due to our not yet fully understanding his ties with still-life painters from Lucca such as Simone del Tintore and Paolo Paolini whom he is likely to have met during his supposed trip to Rome in 1625.

This painting is one of the few still lifes by Strozzi that is accepted as fully autograph by all scholars.The tripartite design is simple and deliberately unfussy, with most of the objects on a similar pictorial plane. Both the gentle light entering the scene from the left and the cream background pay homage to Caravaggio's Still life of fruits and Flowers in a Basket in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan.¹ Strozzi's characteristic thick use of paint can be felt throughout the design, from the white reflection on the vase to the gentler brushstrokes that describe the peonies. The wide range in his technique is emphasised by the more measured and contained approach to the glass vase and the white ceramic bowl lower right.

While Manzitti (see Literature) has suggested that the work is datable to Strozzi's Genoese phase, Suida Manning proposes a dating to the artist's later Venetian years. She is effusive in her praise for the work, commenting on its "'modernity' comparable to Velázquez, almost anticipating the painters of the later nineteenth century in France, even Manet."



1. See S. Schütze, Caravaggio, The Complete Works, Cologne 2009, p. 248, cat. no. 7, reproduced in colour.