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Description: | Signed: yes Description: The names of Jean-Baptiste Monnoyer (1634-1699) and Sebastiano Ricci (1659-1734) are recorded in association with this canvas from early on, in the Chiswick inventory of about 1740 the painting is listed as 'Flowers by Baptiste ye Boy by Seb. Ricci'. The specialist flower painter, Monnoyer, left France for England in 1690; this work is signed and dated 1699, the year of his death. Ricci's contribution to the painting was therefore a subsequent intervention - he did not arrive in England until 1711/12 - intended to 'improve' the picture. Monnoyer frequently collaborated with figure painters who added cupids to his flower paintings, therefore while Ricci's contribution remained in keeping with the French master's ideas, the character of the figure he added seems to derive from the Roman prototype for this kind of painting: from 1692 to 1695 Ricci worked at Palazzo Colonna in Rome where he would certainly have seen the four large painted mirrors in the Galleria Grande decorated with flowers by Mario dei Fiori and Putti by Carlo Maratta - these are among the outstanding models for cupid and flower compositions and Ricci's revision to the Chiswick Monnoyer re-proposes, in his own idiom, the playful gravitas of Maratta's canonical works. The painting was probably enlarged along the top edge to fit William Kent's frame. | Subjects: | still life (flowers); figure (cupid) | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Artist: Monnoyer, Jean-Baptiste (French painter, 1636-1699, active in Paris and London) Æ Ricci, Sebastiano (Italian painter and draftsman, 1659-1734) | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=8730... | Go to resource |
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