Charles-François Poerson (1653 - 1725) , attributed to Flora, c. 1677 Oil on canvas 79 x 123 cm Distinctive elements: on the reverse, on the upper axis of the frame, printed label '106136/9'. Provenance: Hampel, München, 26.06.2009 (Poerson), l. 280; Hampel, München, 30.06.2016, l. 837 (Poerson) Exhibits: expertise of Emilio Negro, in copy (as Poerson) Conservation status. Support: 75% (possible breakage, repaired, on the left side; rintelo) Conservation status. Surface: 80% (colour fading and scattered retouches, especially on the left side; peeling) The work depicts Flora, a divinity of the plant world, surrounded by putti, some of them winged, who decorate her by handing her flowers. Emilio Negro, with happy intuition, links the painting to the French painter Charles-François Poerson, who was active for a long time in Italy. A child of art, Charles François trained alongside his father Charles and then became a pupil of his cousin Noël Coypel, an exponent of the classicist current and director of the Académie de France à Rome from 1673 to 1675. With Coypel, Charles François went to Rome in 1672, thanks to a prize he had won the year before. From 1677 he was again in Paris, where he joined the Académie Royale in 1682. His connection with Italy brought him back to the Urbe where he was in turn appointed director of the Académie from 1704 until his death, and between 1714 and 1718 and again in 1721-22 director of the Accademia di San Luca. In 1725 he died in Rome and his tomb, attributed to the sculptor Pierre de L'Estache, also director of the Villa Medici (1737-1738), commemorates his merits in the Church of San Luigi dei Francesi. As proof of entry to the Académie Royale, in 1677, Poerson painted 'The Union of the Academy of Paris and the Academy of St. Luke in Rome', a canvas today conserved in the Musée National des Châteaux de Versailles et de Trianon (inv. MV 7291). The work shows strong similarities with the canvas under examination, both in the workmanship of the figures (in particular the female figure in a pink dress, which shows an almost identical profile to the canvas under examination) and in the way the sky and foliage are painted, in rather regular rounded patches. Although the anatomies in the painting on auction appear more rigid and simplified, perhaps also due to excessive cleaning (while the still life piece of the flowers in Flora's lap remains magnificent). These similarities - in the hypothesis of confirmation of the attribution to Poerson - would suggest a similar dating for the work under examination.