(Moncalvo 1596–1676)
Vases of flowers on a table,
oil on canvas, 95 x 163 cm, framed

Saleroom notice:
Alberto Cottino does not accept the attribution to Orsola Maddalena Caccia for the present painting on the basis of a photograph.
Filippo Maria Ferro has endorsed the attribution to Orsola Maddalena Caccia for the present painting on the basis of a photograph.

Provenance:
A noble Piedmontese family;
and by descent to the present owners, since 1960

We are grateful to Laura Laureati for suggesting the attribution and we are grateful to Francesco Solinas for confirming the attribution to Orsola Maddalena Caccia.

Based on close stylistic and compositional similarities, as well as iconographic similarities, the present large unpublished canvas has been attributed to Orsola Maddalena Caccia. Because of its arrangement and likeness to certain other works by the Lombard painter, the present painting can be dated to the early production of the artist’s first maturity, between 1615 and 1625.

Orsola Maddalena was the daughter of Guglielmo Caccia called Moncalvo (1568-1625), a successful painter in the Savoy’s Piedmont and in Spanish and Gonzaga Lombardy. Orsola Maddalena learnt her father’s art in her youth and in 1620 she entered the convent of the Orsoline at Bianzé. Shortly before the death of her father on 15th April 1625, by now already a renowned painter, she moved to the large convent at the centre of Moncalvo built by the rich Guglielmo for his three daughters. Orsola Maddalena painted there for the rest of her life, producing sacred subjects and arrangements with flowers, fruits and birds. A rich and powerful abbess, she instituted a form of art academy for nuns in her palace and gardens.

Caccia was celebrated for her still-lifes at this time such as the present Vases of flowers on a table, which can be dated to no later than 1625 due to a comparison of subjects with the three Still-lives with flowers, birds and fruit conserved by the Comune di Moncalvo. In the present work, the flowers are represented according to nature with exacting precision, and they are arranged in their respective vases according to their ancient religious significance. The expensive tulips, lilies, irises and anemones, like the roses, hellebore, calendula and the oleanders, lily-of-the-valley, jasmine, columbine and large peonies all represent symbolic prayers and sacred allegories. The flowers are placed in large vases of the kind made at Faenza in the late Cinquecento, ornamented with Persian motifs, and in glass vases touched by bright reflections of light. These vessels resemble, and at times are identical, to those found in the artist’s other paintings at Moncalvo.

The present extraordinary work reveals the precocity of Caccia’s exposure to counter-reformation painting, especially that of Fede Galizia and Caravaggio.

We are grateful to Francesco Solinas for his assistance in cataloguing the present painting.