FRANCESCO LAVAGNA Lot n° 9

(Naples, 1684 - 1724) Still life of flowers in a garden Oil on canvas, 23X34.7 cm (2) Provenance: Private collection Francesco Lavagna is one of the protagonists of Neapolitan still life painting in the early eighteenth century, and his training, in analogy with Gaspare Lopez, took place in the atelier of Andrea Belvedere. The works presented here document very well the expressive qualities of the painter, who was capable of creating with vivacity and sprezzatura a sequence of similar compositions without falling into the banality of illustrative replication, displaying a chromatic sensitivity of considerable visual impact. The concept of devising such a developed cycle, played out on a concatenation of flower vases and united by the same framing, immediately makes one imagine an overall project that the artist conceived by screening the spaces for which it was intended. That said, the paucity of biographical information on the artist appears astonishing. The rationale can be explained by reading passages from De Dominici who devoted more attention to the master Belvedere, except to comment with critical acumen on the disciple's talent, indicating that: 'he enlarged his flowers a little excessively and painted them with more freedom.' This quotation may in part correspond to the works known to us, for such is the emancipation of painting that it is possible to compare its results with late 18th-century authors such as Guardi and the pseudo-Guardesque production. The chronological leap pronounced here is in the first place a confirmation of the instinctive modernity of these canvases, constructed with tremendous impasto, glazing and thickness, but especially, with light: a luminosity that radiates unhindered and yielding, bathing the colors. Returning to De Dominici and the relative historiographical misfortune of ours, after the greater visibility offered to the master Belvedere, the Neapolitan critic probably runs into a mistake by speaking of Giuseppe Lavagna and not Francesco. Today's critics give credence to the existence of this second personality, almost certainly linked by kinship, nonetheless, the works, some of which are signed 'Fran.c Lavagna P.' respond morellianly in unison and are the only ones known to us that allow us to define his style. Reference bibliography: B. De Dominici, Vite de pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani, Naples 1742-1745 (1979 anastatic reprint), p. 575 R. Causa, Still life in Naples in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, in Storia di Napoli, Cava de Tirreni 1972, V, tomo 2, p. 1025, no. 118 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 L. Salerno, Nuovi studi sulla natura morta, Rome 1989, p. 119, fig. 113