Offered by Antichità Castelbarco
Giovanni Agostino Cassana (Venice after 1658 - Genoa 1720)
Still life with a pair of gallinaceous birds
Oil on canvas 81 x 63 cm - Framed 100 x 81 cm
Provenance: Sotheby's Milan, 07/06/2000, lot 199 (estimate €10,000 - 15,000), see photographic details - Published in: Naturalia. Nature morte in collezioni pubbliche e private (Still lifes in public and private collections), edited by G. Bocchi and U. Bocchi, Turin, 1992, p. 155
NB: please note that the painting is darker in real life than in the photos published here, which were taken using professional lighting.
The painting in question, entitled ‘Still Life with a Pair of Gallinaceous Birds’, is attributed to Giovanni Agostino Cassana (Venice post 1658 - Genoa 1720). The canvas, published in the volume “Naturalia. Still lifes in public and private collections”, edited by G. Bocchi and U. Bocchi, immediately catches the eye with its intense realism, with the birds hanging upside down, tied by their legs, standing out against a dark, neutral background.
It is a masterpiece of painting that allows the artist to masterfully use light and shadow to enhance the texture of the feathers, the brown and black colours of the plumage and the vivid red details of the heads.
The anatomical precision and material rendering are remarkable. The genre of still life, dedicated to game, achieved great popularity in the 17th century, especially in the Flemish but also in the Italian context, facilitated by the influence of painters such as Jan Baptist Weenix and Willem van Aelst who stayed in Italy, but with stylistic and symbolic differences: the Flemish often incorporate religious symbolism linked to the transience of life (memento mori), while Italian paintings tended to focus more on plastic and compositional realism, with an emphasis on the materiality of the subjects depicted.
The vibrant sensation conveyed by the appearance of these two gallinaceous birds reaches an exceptional expressive vehemence here, certainly captured outdoors and acquired through a free and loose but meticulous Italian-style technique, both in the lighting and in the warm, intense colour it emanates, mixing the Nordic taste for detailed realism with Caravaggesque plasticity.
Delevery information :
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