FRANCESCO LAVAGNA (active in Naples between the 17th and 18th centuries) Still life with flowers, plate and wineskin Oil on canvas, 48X69 cm Provenance: Rome, private collection Ascribable to the Neapolitan school, the still life presented here shows clear similarities with the style of Francesco Lavagna (active in Naples between the 17th and 18th centuries), a protagonist of 18th-century Neapolitan naturamortismo in the wake of Andrea Belvedere, the French florists and in tune with Gaspare Lopez. The canvas documents very well the expressive qualities of the painter, who was capable of sprezzaturably executing a sequence of similar compositions without ever falling into the banality of illustrative replication and displaying a descriptive capacity of considerable visual impact, so much so as to herald late 18th-century results in analogy with Guardi. This is first and foremost a confirmation of the instinctive modernity, enhanced by the skilful play of glazing and thicknesses of material, but above all by modulating a luminosity that radiates unhindered and unbroken, bathing the surface in iridescence. Set en plein air, in a garden with backdrops of trees and hedges and enriched by classical fragments, marble vases and a multicoloured parrot arranged with apparent casualness, from which the painter's extraordinary rocaille talent can be perceived. Reference bibliography: B. De Dominici, Vite de pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani, Naples 1742-1745 (anastatic reprint of 1979), p. 575 L. Salerno, La natura morta italiana 1560-1805, Rome 1984, p. 239, fig. 59.1 A. Tecce, La natura morta in Italia, Milan 1989, II, p. 946, fig. 1149