Cristoforo Munari
Four still lifes with musical instruments
1710

Name: Four still lifes with musical instruments
Brand: Cristoforo Munari
Price: 87283.46 USD
Availability: InStock

About the Item

Cristoforo Munari (Reggio Emilia, 1667 - Piva, 1720) and workshop “Cello, two lutes, small apples and sheet music”, 52x69 cm “Guitar, mandola, jug, peaches and score”, 51x68 cm “Still life with harp, lute, trumpet, flute and score”, 52x69 cm “Violins, lute, lily, lemons and sheet music” 51x69 cm This beautiful and elegant series of four paintings is a beautiful testimony to a pictorial theme that has been very popular since the mid-17th century: still life with musical instruments. The evolution of the nature-mortist fashion oriented towards compositions with musical instruments, starting from the "instrumental" inserts of Caravaggio, this "genre" sees its maximum expressive and virtuosic development in the work of Evaristo Baschenis from Bergamo, author of real Vanitas, in which there is a suggestive silence between objects created instead to fill environments with sounds. Cristoforo Munari, identified by Professor Francesca Baldassari as the author of the works presented here, created together with his help, represents the link between the severe representation of Baschenis and a more modern and lighter approach, more suited to high quality decoration than to philosophical introspection. In fact, this type of paintings were placed in the music rooms of the Medici salons and in noble homes, to embellish and show guests the purpose of the rooms. Two of his canvases Still life with fruit, porcelain and musical instruments, Still life with fruit, books, plates and musical scores, 1710-1720 are kept in the Amedeo Lia Civic Museum in La Spezia. In 1998 the municipality of Reggio Emilia promoted an exhibition to pay tribute to the painter at Palazzo Magnani. The paintings are presented framed as in image n. 5. The size of the paintings including frame is approximately 72x90 cm. The works are accompanied by an autograph letter from Prof. Francesca Baldassari of Florence, author of the most authoritative publications on Cristoforo Munari and also on seventeenth-eighteenth-century Florentine painting Shipping is offer for free; additional taxes relating to importation into non-Eur countries will be borne by the buyer, subject to agreements. The Studiolo gallery issues a certificate of authenticity and according to the law and in the light of its thirty years of activity and experience. Guido Cribiori director of the Studiolo Gallery Below is the text of the Prof.Baldassari's letter Florence, 18 September 2022 Cristoforo Munari (Reggio Emilia, 1667 - Piva, 1720) and workshop “Cello, two lutes, small apples and sheet music”, 52x69 cm “Guitar, mandola, jug, peaches and score”, 51x68 cm “Still life with harp, lute, trumpet, flute and score”, 52x69 cm “Violins, lute, lily, lemons and sheet music” 51x69 cm The canvases present Munari's usual repertoire of objects which are presented with scenographic and illusionistic taste and on staggered levels as the artist from Reggio Emilia used to do. Munari's signature is evident in the luministic rigor and scenic rendering of the violin of the first painting mentioned above, in the harp, lute, flute and trumpet of the third canvas mentioned above, and in the violin and lily of the fourth example. The other parts of the quartet are weaker, suggesting the intervention of the workshop. It is very likely that the canvases belong to Munari's Florentine period, documented starting from April 1706 and lasting until 1715, undoubtedly the happiest moment of his artistic maturity, thanks to the close relationships established with the Medici court and with the wealthy nobility that gravitated around it. The favors granted to Munari by Florentine patronage and, consequently, the achievement of the long-awaited economic independence probably allowed him to work with greater serenity and to achieve a higher level of production in his works.- If in the Po Valley Munari had received the impulse to practice the genre of still life and had taken his first steps, if Rome was the formative center of his poetics based on the personal reinvention of Nordic painting and that of Giovanni Paolo Spadino, Florence is the place where his versatile talent finds full expression and his talent as a painter, having achieved free and definitive expression, reaches unrivaled drawing and pictorial heights. The importance of the support of the Grand Prince Ferdinando de Medici (1663 - 1713) cannot be emphasized enough for the fate of Munari. Cristoforo's call to Florence where he could count on commissions of works by Francesco Riccardi (1648 - 1719), the Marquis Donato Maria Guadagni (1641 - 1718) is most likely due to this eager collector, passionate about the still life genre. , of the Feroni family, of Giovanni Gualtiero Guicciardini and of the Moretti da Bagnano. The four examples presented here probably had to embellish the rooms of some Florentine noble house. Francesca Baldassari

Creator:

Cristoforo Munari (1667 - 1720, Italian)

Creation Year:

1710

Dimensions:

Height: 20.48 in (52 cm)Width: 27.17 in (69 cm)Depth: 2.37 in (6 cm)

Medium:

Oil

Movement & Style:

Old Masters

Period:

1710-1719