(Bergamo 1639 – post 1699)
Musical instruments,
oil on canvas, 116.5 x 143 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection;
where acquired by the present owner

We are grateful to Alberto Cottino for his help in cataloguing this work.

The present painting represents an important addition to the catalogue of Bartolomeo Battera.

In the present compostion the artist includes his typical repertoire of subject matter and although the composition may appear to be arranged casually, it is quite possible that the painting was intended to be interpreted allegorically, according to the tradition of ‘thinking in metaphors’ [‘pensar per metafore’] typical of the seventeenth century. The playing cards on the left side of the table could for example allude to a specific symbolic meaning.

In the present painting various string and bow instruments, musical scores and books are represented on a table decorated with elegant volutes. It is partially covered by a rumpled Persian carpet, which the painter describes in detail. The attention of the viewer is drawn to the right by an ornate jug, probably representing a mythological scene of Hercules, while an armillary sphere resting on a side table draws our eye across the composition into the background. A damasked drape serves as a curtain as if unveiling the scene and allowing light to flood into the foreground and reach back to the left wall, while leaving some objects in the background in shadow.

This work, as suggested by its softly toned pallet, can be compared to other compostions from Bettera’s maturity, and perhaps specifically to those from his second Milanese period begun in 1688. A similar drape can be found in a canvas formerly in the Festa collection in Vicenza (see M. Rosci, Baschenis, Bettera, & Co. Produzione e mercato della natura morta del Seicento in Italia, Bergamo 1971, p. 153, fig. 152) while other motifs such as the stone table or chequered tiled floors depicted in perspective, reoccur in various paintings from private collections (see Bartolomeo Bettera. La sonata barocca, ed. by A. Cottino, exhibition catalogue, Bergamo 2008, pp. 66-69, nos. 15-16 and M. Rosci, cit., p. 152, no. 150).

Active in Lombardy during the latter half of the seventeenth century, Bartolomeo Battera’s biography remains for the most part obscure. It is uncertain whether he was apprenticed to Evaristo Baschenis, but he was certainly in contact with this older painter from Bergamo, as he was influenced by his approach to painting still-lives with musical instruments. Nevertheless, their painting techniques are distinct from one another, both in terms of the relation between the objects represented and in their overall compositions. Those of Baschenis are quieter and played out in the use of voids while Battera’s compostions are fast, full and dominated by a rhymical use of space.