(Milan 1616–1681 Bologna)
A boy in courtly attire with a parrot and a vase with flowers against a Baroque park landscape,
oil on canvas, 99 x 148.5 cm, framed

We are grateful to Alberto Cottino for confirming the attribution. A written report accompanies the present painting.

The present work depicts a young man playing with a parrot in a gilded cage. This genre-like scene is set on the terrace of a Villa or a Palazzo, and in the distance an extensive garden in the baroque style is visible, which is in itself interesting as a document of horticultural history. The architectural arches that punctuate the central axis are historically informative as are the exotic trees in containers dotted around in a geometric pattern following the formal beds. The richness and luxury of the composition is further enhanced by the expensively embroidered cloth the young man has just dropped on the balustrade and by a bunch of flowers which, even if isolated from the rest of the composition, would stand out as a still life. The flowers are presented in an finely worked metal vase decorated by a mask in the Grotesche taste.

Professor Alberto Cottino compares the unusual combination of genre painting, a flower still life and the landscape with other works by the artist showing the same characteristics, among them the Credenziere in the Pinacoteca Civica di Cento, with a similar flower still life and figure in an equally impressive setting. The vase in particular features, even in a comparable positioning in the composition, in a work by Cittadini in Naples, Museo di Capodimonte, and in a work in Bologna (Istituto Giovanni XXIII, illustrated in D. Benati, La natura morta in Emilia e in Romagna, Milano, Skira, 2000, p. 93 fig. 53) which also includes a triumphal arch in a garden setting. Also very comparable to the present work is the Allegory of Spring in the Galleria Estense di Modena (see Benati, op. cit., p. 49, fig. 12).

The painting appears to contain an allegorical message - on the cage of the parrot the inscription “No one is accepted in his own country” may refer to the sitter or the collector, possibly a refugee from another country or Italian state, who commissioned the present painting.

Initially a pupil of Daniele Crespi, Cittadini moved to Bologna before the age of twenty to study with Guido Reni, whose influence is clearly evident in such early works as the Martyrdom of Saint Stephen, the Flagellation and the Christ crowned with Thorns in the church of Santo Stefano, Bologna. He travelled to Rome in the mid-1640s and came into contact with the French and Flemish artists living there. This international melting pot gave rise to an original artistic vocabulary aimed at the naturalistic depiction of reality in a vast number of still lifes, landscapes and portraits.