(Florence 1642–1710)
Flowers in a vase centered by a mascaron; and
Flowers in a vase decorated with festoons,
oil on canvas, each 72 x 57 cm, framed, a pair (2)

The present canvases depict luxuriant compositions of various species of flowers, arranged in the baroque taste, in elaborate vases, enriched by relief decorations. The pictures are contained within painted ovals, and each is enlivened by the presence of a colourful parrot.

The two works are characteristic of Andrea Scacciati, who, with Bartolomeo Bimbi was the foremost still life painter of his generation in Florence. Trained first by Mario Balassi and then with Lorenzo Lippi, the artist, as reported by his biographer, and fellow painter Giovanni Camillo Sagrestani, was initiated by the latter to ‘study from nature all kind of flowers, which in short he did and beginning to make pictures he turned out to be the best that was at that time in Florence, where he was employed by many great noblemen and lords’.

Scacciati’s creations, which can be distinguished from those of his colleague Bimbi by the more graphic and decorative character of his work, often include animals, notably his works including parrots, among which we remember the Gilded Vase with flowers, wild herbs, parrot and butterflies, in horizontal format, and the pendant Gilded Vase with flowers and parrot, signed and dated 1700 (see S. Bellesi, Andrea Scacciati; pittore di fiori, frutta e animali a Firenze in età tardobarocca, Florence 2012, no. 80a, p. 162, nos. 70-71, pp. 151-152). Paintings by Scacciati depicting ‘ovals with parrots and flowers’ appear in 1679 in inventories of the Medici collections (see op. cit. Bellesi, 2012, p. 209). The aforementioned canvases held by the Gruppo Banca Popolare di Vicenza (nos. 70-71, pp. 151-152) seem to provide a chronological foothold for the present pendant, referable to the mature phase of the painter’s activity, at the turn of the eighteenth century.