CARAVAGGESQUE PAINTER OF THE 18TH CENTURY Still Life with Basket of Fruit, Vegetables and Cheese Oil on canvas, 98X131 cm The still life under examination was assigned with due caution to Francesco Boneri known as Cecco del Caravaggio (Bergamo, 1580/1585; after 1620) by Mina Gregori. Indeed, the composition reflects an archaic illustrative typology, but if the basket and the stuffed flask evoke Caravaggesque models, the iconographic abundance, the cold meats and the portion of cheese lead us to a typically Po Valley area. Having said this, we note that the genuineness of the representation is not attributable to a Caravaggesque reading, but finds greater adherence to that bare and symbolic essentiality that characterises the still life genre throughout the Via Emilia. In light of this consideration, it is understandable the temptation to trace the genesis of these creations back to Cecco's alveolus, a temptation that we trace back to the early 1960s, when Bottari referred two still lifes painted on parchment to the painter, which were in turn exhibited at the exhibition in Naples in 1964 and published as such with the hypothesis of an attribution also to Ludovico Finsonius by Veca in 1983 (Cf. A. Veca, Simposio, exhibition catalogue by P. Lorenzelli and A. Veca, Bergamo 1983, pp. 334-335, table XXIV; G. Papi, Bartolomeo Cavarozzi, Soncino 2015, pp. 148-149, fig. 6-7). One must therefore ponder a purely local compositional typology that inevitably conditioned the Lombard Caravaggio and his close followers, but which became established between Bergamo and Mantua during the first half of the century. This is why the still life under examination, and its acerbic and pauperistic peculiarities, is of absolutely secondary importance for understanding a genre whose geography and physiognomy is still largely to be traced. (cf. G. Papi, Bartolomeo Cavarozzi, Soncino 2015, pp. 148-149, fig. 6-7).