Neapolitan school; end of the XVII century.

Neapolitan school; late seventeenth century.
"Still life".
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 57.5 x 72 cm; 72 x 87 cm (frame).
This is a genre painting characteristic of the Neapolitan school in the Baroque period. On this occasion, the still life combines several subgenres: with elements of landscape and architecture. The whole denotes the paradoxical combination of an attentive naturalism placed in the detail (leaves, petals, branches...) together with a poetic charge that transcends the verisimilitude, taking us into an idealized place. Reds and silvers, emeralds and earthy tones, harmonize their ranges in a palette of sensual resonances.
Highly appreciated in the antiquarian market, as well as among collectors and art historians, the Neapolitan still life school of the Baroque enjoyed a spectacular development, leaving behind the splendors of the 16th century and progressing within a fully Baroque and clearly identifiable style. Artists such as Tommaso Realfonso, Nicola Casissa, Gaspare Lopez, Giacomo Nani and Baldassare de Caro continued the local tradition by specializing in the painting of flowers, fruit, fish and game, thus satisfying the demand of a vast clientele characterized by a new taste typical of the 17th century. To these authors must also be added the minor figures, who are slowly emerging from an unjust oblivion, and some artists who worked between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, such as Francesco della Questa, Aniello Ascione, Nicola Malinconico, Gaetano Cusati, Onofrio Loth, Elena and Nicola Maria Recco, Giuseppe Ruoppolo and Andrea Belvedere. These Neapolitan still life painters, who worked during the 17th and early 18th century, are called "i generisti", and were important not only within their own environment but also, and especially, in Spain, where the development of the genre was clearly marked by Italian influence, specifically by the contribution of the Neapolitan school. Today this school is considered one of the most outstanding within the Baroque still life. The distinctive sign of Neapolitan Baroque painters was always their strong naturalistic character and their warm chromatism, with a dominance of reddish and earthy tones.