(Genoa 1639–1709 Rome)
(Antwerp 1631–1690 Naples)
A youth lifting a vase of flowers from the pedestal, a landscape beyond,
oil on canvas, 97.5 x 76.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
with Galleria Gioberti, Rome, 1960s;
Private European collection

Exhibited:
Ariccia, Palazzo Chigi, Il Baciccio un anno dopo. La collezione Chigi. Restauri e nuove scoperte, 25 March – 27 May 2001, cat. no. 8 (as Il Baciccio and Abraham Brueghel)

Literature:
Il Baciccio un anno dopo. La collezione Chigi. Restauri e nuove scoperte, ed. by M. Fagiolo Dell’Arco, exhibition catalogue, Geneva 2001, pp. 44-46, cat. no. 8 (as Il Baciccio and Abraham Brueghel);
F. Petrucci, Baciccio: Giovan Battista Gaulli; 1639-1709, Rome 2009, p. 16, illustrated p. 17, p. 561 cat. no. D2 (as G. B. Gaulli and Abraham Brueghel)

The present painting represents a youth lifting a vase of flowers, who was painted by Giovan Battista Gaulli. The vase is richly sculpted with acanthus leaf motifs, presenting a triumph of nature. The clearly defined flowers can each be identified as northern tulips, roses, peonies, carnations, dahlias and a branch of lilies. The meticulous depiction of the flowers has been given to the Flemish painter Abraham Brueghel.

The collaboration of Giovan Battista Gaulli, called il Baciccio, and Abraham Brueghel is known from correspondence with Prince Antonio Ruffo of Messina in 1665 and 1666. On 31st July 1666 Brueghel wrote that he was collaborating with ‘Baciccio Genovese valenthuomo’ particularly for ‘doi quadri’ in which respectively, Gaulli and Giacinto Brandi, ‘contraccambio mi hanno fatto quelle figure, et poi vi ho fatto li fiori a gusto mio et con studio’ [‘in exchange made me those figures, and then I made the flowers according to my own taste and studies’] (see V. Ruffo, Galleria Ruffo nel secolo XVII in Messina, con lettere di pittori ed altri documenti inediti, in: Bollettino d’Arte del Ministero della Pubblica Istruzione, May – June 1916, vol. 5/6, no. 10, pp. 182-184). At this time, Brueghel was 34 years old and he had been in Rome for seven years and he was to remain there until his move to Naples in 1676. He was a painter in his full maturity. Baciccio, on the other hand, was still a young man at the outset of his career, but he was already greatly respected.

During the baroque period the ‘genere misto’, or mixed genres of painting was popular. Artists specialised in specific genres of painting, such as still life, figurative or landscape painting and works were executed by collaboration between artists, such as the painting Fanciullo con cesta di fiori e due cani attributed to Giovan Battista Gaulli and Abraham Brueghel in a private collection (see P. Boccardo/A. Orlando, in: I fiori del barocco. Pittura a Genova dal naturalismo al rococò, exhibition catalogue, Milan 2006, pp. 246-247).

According to Fagiolo (see literature) the present painting should be dated to Gaulli’s early maturity of circa 1665. He was born in Genoa, but he was largly active in Rome from 1657. In 1662 Gaulli was already inducted into the Accademia di San Luca, before becoming a preferred of Gian Lorenzo Bernini. Gaulli became one of the most claimed artists in Rome, working in Sant’Agnese in Agone and then in the Church of Gesù, where he composed in 1685 his most celebrated fresco The Triumph of the name of Jesus.