Emilian School, 18th Century, Couple Of Living Natures With Birds

Emilian School, 18th century

Couple of living natures with birds

Oil on canvas, cm 28 x 30

With frame, cm 37 x 38,5

The northern Italian painting school developed, already from the 16th century, a particular predilection for a naturamortism that investigated with vividness and virtuosity the subjects traditionally found in the drawing repertoire; living natures of animals thus presented, preferentially, Creatures of the underbrush, courtyard and pastoral. The tactile processing of the pictorial material had encouraged an ever greater preference for alignment with the trends then coming from the Flemish countries; these characteristics are found in the present pair of live natures with birds, produced in Emilia Romagna in the first decades of the 18th century. In this beautiful pair of animal paintings, a contingent of small birds is presented according to paradigms of vivid realism. The figures, rendered through rapid brushstrokes, are characterized by a marked dynamism, further emphasized by accentuated luministic touches. The works have similarities with the main proponents of the genre of living nature between Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna in the first half of the eighteenth century, Angelo Maria Crivelli called the Crivellone, Giovanni Crivelli, his son, and Giorgio Duranti. Angelo Maria Crivelli, better known as the Crivellone, and his son Giovanni Crivelli, called the Crivellino, were two significant figures in the Lombard artistic scene between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Distinguishing themselves in particular for their skill in painting animals and hunting scenes. Angelo Maria Crivelli (circa 1660 - after 1730) was the founder of this artistic dynasty. Influenced by artists such as the Flemish Rubens and Snyders and the Neapolitan Ruoppolo, he learned the liveliness and naturalism typical of animal painting of the time.