This magnificent pair of floral still lifes is by one of the most “celebrated painter of flowers” of seventeenth-century Italy, Elisabetta Marchioni. She was described thus by her late eighteenth-century biographer Bartoli, the chief source for the few biographical details that survive for this artist, namely, that she was the “wife of Sante Marchioni gold-smith by profession” and that she died at an advanced age “around 1700”. Bartoli also cited a number of her paintings, or groups of paintings, in various collections in Rovigo, in the Veneto. He also explained that it was she herself who had bequeathed the “altar-frontal with a monstance supported by putti and vases of flowers” to the local Capuchin Fathers, who presented it “on the High Altar in various functions”; the work is now in the Pinacoteca of the Accademia dei Concordi in Rovigo (see F. Bartoli, Le pitture sculture ed architetture delia città di Rovigo, Venice, 1793, pp. 185, 239, 318–19).
The Rovigo altar frontal is of fundamental importance for the reconstruction of Marchioni’s oeuvre, as it served as the point of departure for establishing attributions to her on the grounds of stylistic evidence (see E. Safarik and E. Bottari, in C. Pirovano, E. Zeri, and F. Porzio, eds., La natura morta in Italia, Milan, 1989, vol. 1, pp. 329–33, nos. 383–90). The exuberance of the vases bursting with flowers relegate to second place the liturgically preeminent role of the monstrance, supported by two small angels; this favouring of flowers over any object, no matter its importance, seems to be the particular characteristic of Marchioni’s still lifes. It also characterizes the present pair of pendant paintings, in which the vases appear to almost disappear into the background. Further elements typical of her works are also found: the stone bases upon which the vases of flowers are displayed, the use of elaborate metal vases, crammed with an infinite variety of flowers (roses, carnations, jasmines, tulips, and others), and the rendering of the flowers using dense but remarkably free and luminous touches of the brush.
The present pair of canvases seem to occupy an intermediate position within the artist’s career. They appear to represent a phase later than the simplified compositions against dark grounds characteristic of her earliest productions, but do not yet present the open-air settings typical of her later works. In the present works, Marchioni’s floral blooms emerge from vases, save one to the far right of each canvas that seemingly spring from the ground, alluding to the idea of their being painted at least partially plein air. In terms of compositional complexity, brushwork, and the preparation of the canvas (the pigment has rubbed away in some of the dark background areas to reveal the red priming layer), the paintings are perhaps closest typologically and stylistically to the pair of flower paintings in the Museo del Castello di Buonconsiglio in Trent (for which see 3 E. Chini, “Due quadri di fiori di Elisabetta Marchioni,” in Studi Trentini di Scienze Storiche, 72–73, 2, 1993–94 (1997), pp. 25–34, figs. 1–7), as well as with the altar frontal in Rovigo mentioned above.