(Feldkirch 1664–1736 Milan)
A wild fowl seller,
oil on unlined canvas, 188 x 126.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
commissioned by Count Alfonso Vismara, villa di Montesolaro, Como;
and thence by descent to the present owner

Literature:
L. Tognoli, G. F. Cipper, il “Todeschini” e la pittura di genere, Bergamo 1976, p. 153, no. 91 and fig. 107 (with measurements 200 x 134 cm);
M. S. Proni, Giacomo Francesco Cipper detto il “Todeschini”, Soncino 1994, pp. 98–99, illustrated (with measurements 192 x 131 cm)

This painting, like its pendant, lot 109, represents a market scene. In this instance the protagonist is a raggedly dressed youth shown standing on the left side of the composition. He may be understood as the potential buyer of the game that he holds, or as a hunter offering game to the stall-keeper before him, who holds up a hand indicating either the price of his merchandise or the amount of game he wishes to buy. Separating the two and creating a sense of spatial recession, is a stall-table over-loaded with game; in front of this are two pullets and a dog.

The present painting is one of the finest pictorial expressions of Giacomo Francesco Cipper called ‘Todeschini’. It was probably made during the second decade of the eighteenth century at a time when his career was sufficiently established enough to receive prestigious commissions. Indeed he was commissioned to paint this, along with five other canvases, by count Alfonso Vismara to decorate the walls of his villa at Montesolaro near Como, an elegant building from the seventeenth century that he had renovated in the prevailing late Baroque (or barocchetto) taste of the era, which still dominates the surrounding landscape from the hill on which it rises. In addition to the present painting and its pendant lot 109, the cycle included The Sowing Lesson, The Fortune Teller, The School Teacher and The Music Teacher (Private collection).

Todeschini, a painter of Austrian origin, was active in Lombardy from the close of the seventeenth century until his death. He is renowned for his genre compositions depicting scenes of every-day life. As in the works of the Dane Bernhard Keil, a fundamental figure of reference for the formation of Cipper’s pictorial language, he represented recurring themes and subjects: elderly women, hunters, card players, washer-women, children, school scenes, or as in this case, market scenes. In contrast to his near contemporary, Giacomo Ceruti, who was also active in Lombardy and celebrated for his representations of émigrés and the poor, Todeschini’s paintings refute any meditative or introspective quality. Instead, he represents a light-hearted and joyful reality, or simply humble scenes drawn from every-day life that might please the public. However, over the course of his career his approach to the every-day became more participatory, probably owing to the increasing prestige of his commissions, as is the case with the market scene under discussion. Here, for example, the figures show a greater monumentality, fully articulated in space, and they acquire a new decorum free of those rough and rudimentary qualities that characterised the figures in his earlier productions. His typical earth tones are attenuated by the clear light falling on the splendid still life passage of game laid out on the stall-table at the centre of the composition. The figures represented here draw on a familiar repertoire from Cipper’s paintings: the dog in the foreground, for example, recurs in the Young Couple at Table and in the Genre Scene with a Young Couple, both private collection, while the porter in the background holds the basket in exactly the same manner as the youth in the Fruit-seller and a Youth with a Basket of Fruit, also in a private collection.

Technical analysis
The present painting is still on its original canvas. without a lining, the pictorial surface seems to have never been affected by conservation treatments, which is rare. Such canvases are light in weight and can be easily stretched and positioned within domestic interiors.

Among the pigments employed in the present painting indigo has been detected in the blue-grey sky and in the deep blue sleeve of the young man in the foreground. The sky, meanwhile, is made of ochre and lead white, so it was intended to be this colour. Indigo was typically used in the seventeenth century instead of azurite or instead of ultramarine blue. These pigments were replaced around 1720 in Italy, by a new pigment, Prussian blue.

In the present painting a variety of ochre colours have been used, from yellow to dark brown, as well as red or green earth. A contour underdrawing can be seen in some of the figures when examined with IR reflectography and transmitted IR images.

We are grateful to Gianluca Poldi for the technical examination.