(Rome 1608 – documented until 1673)
Flowers in a vase before a rocky landscape with a stream and waterfall; and Flowers in a vase before a river landscape,
oil on canvas, each 89.5 x 121 cm, framed, a pair (2)

We are grateful to Gianluca Bocchi for confirming the attribution on the basis of high resolution digital photographs and for his help in cataloguing the present lot.

Giovanni Stanchi was a so-called ‘genre painter’ in 17th century Rome, which includes still-life painting as a fundamental component. He was one of the finest Roman artists with an active role in the stylistic transition from the post-Caravaggist to the baroque style of still-life painting.

Giovanni Stanchi was the capomaestro of a workshop in which his talented brothers Niccolò and Angelo also worked. From surviving sixteenth- and seventeenth-century inventories, it is known that Giovanni, Niccolò and Angelo Stanchi worked for illustrious Roman families such as the Chigi, Pamphilj, Colonna, Borghese, Pallavicini and Rospigliosi. Stanchi’s formative years were dedicated to the study of floral compositions along with Mario Nuzzi (1606–1673), who he had met during the execution of the celebrated mirrors for the Galleria Grande of the Palazzo Colonna, Rome. However, while Nuzzi proffered from the studio of his uncle, Tommaso Salini, Stanchi drew inspiration from the Flemish masters whose works began to appear in Rome during the first years of the seventeenth century, and in particular those of Daniel Seghers (1590–1661). Stanchi’s first works are influenced by the northern model of garlands of flowers that Seghers had presented in Rome after 1625 and demonstrated the skills he had learned in Antwerp at the Brueghel school.

Over time Stanchi diversified his compositions, increasingly juxtaposing an array of fruits to his botanical representations, which can be especially seen in the canvases that he executed in collaboration with his brothers. In these, it is often easy to recognise the different hands within a single composition. The present two paintings, however, reveal a stylistic unity and quality that confirm their sole attribution to Giovanni Stanchi. The details of the narcissi, the creases of the carnation petals, the red and yellow striations of the tulips and the blue and white ones of the iris, the variety of anemones, the playful vortices of the blue and white convolvulus and the abundance of ancient rose types, along with the fine descriptions of leaf structures, all conspire to characterise a botanical representation by a specialist of the most distinguished level.

The plein air setting and the lateral view over a landscape background allow the dating of these compositions to around the mid-seventeenth century. It is around this time-period that Stanchi’s studio responded to the baroque canon required by their Roman patrons, deploying well-tested and successful compositional solutions with two or three focal points, one of which, positioned vertically, was often a vase of flowers.