(Piacenza 1650–1732 Parma)
A still life with fish, a wicker basket, vine leaves and a cat with its prey,
oil on canvas, 93 x 148 cm, framed

Literature: L. Ravelli, Bartolomeo Arbotoni piacentino, maestro di Evaristo Baschenis. Ipotesi sulla formazione del pittore bergamasco, in: Atti dell’Ateneo di Scienze, Lettere ed Arti, Bergamo, XLVII, 1986/87, p. 12, pl 17 (as Arbotoni);
D. Biagi Maino, La natura morta nell’Emilia occidentale, in: La natura morta in Italia, vol. I, Milan, 1989, pp. 394, 402, fig. 474 (as Boselli);
G. Godi/C. Mingardi (eds.), Le collezioni della Cassa di Risparmio di Parma e Piacenza, exhib. Cat. (Mamiano di Traversetolo), Parma, 1994 (as Boselli);
F. Arisi, Natura morta tra Milano e Parma in età barocca. Felice Boselli, rettifiche e aggiunte, Piacenza, 1995 (as Boselli);
A. Crispo, Felice Boselli, in La natura morta in Emilia e in Romagna, Geneva/Milan 2000, p. 174 (as Boselli);
L. Ravelli, Bartolomeo Arbotoni. Piacenza 1594–1676, s. l., 2000, p. 60, pl. 40 (as Arbotoni);
N. Longari (ed.), Spunti per conversare, December, Milan, 2000, pp. 64–67, no. 14 (as Arbotoni)

The present painting was first published by Ravelli with an attribution to Bartolomeo Arbotoni (Piacenza 1594–1676). However, in 1989 (see literature) Biagi Maino succeeded in identifying it as a work by Felice Boselli. The attribution to Boselli was later confirmed by Godi and Mingardi (1994), Arisi (1995), and Crispo (2000). The final identification of authorship as that of Boselli, who is rightly considered the more famous of the two painters from Piacenza, is based on the superior quality of the present work, which sets itself apart from the simpler painting style still reminiscent of Late Mannerism practiced by the older artist.
Biagi Maino reconstructed Arbotoni’s oeuvre according to strictly restrictive criteria on the basis of the limited information available about the artist’s activity. Although these archival sources are revealing (Crispo, 2000, p. 149), they are only corroborated by two signed works, namely the Still lifes with shot game, fruit and dishes in the Galleria Nazionale in Parma (Biagi Maino, 1989, p. 396). Boselli is likely to have been a student of Arbotoni, who ran a flourishing workshop in Piacenza until his death. Boselli’s handling differs from the latter’s in its greater differentiation with regard to the organization of planes in shadowy interiors and the spectacular display of palace kitchens, as well as the choice of objects depicted, which are arranged according to their association with a particular element – air, water, earth – and rendered extremely naturalistically with a refined palette and through most subtle modelling: in the present work, for instance, the light illuminates the scales of the fish, accentuating their natural surface texture through a play of reflections and white highlights. Another remarkable aspect that distinguishes Boselli’s style from Arbotoni’s manner is the great attention Boselli pays to perspective, which Arbotoni sometimes tends to ignore. This is probably not only due to Boselli’s ‘great familiarity with contemporary perspective painting’, as Crispo points out in his essay (2000, p. 162), but also to the artist’s enormous dexterity in the rendering of form and to his ambition to produce an overall effect that was more important to him than a mere accumulation of individual decorative objects meant to display the wealth and riches of a vain patron: in this context, besides the two still lifes published by Biagi Maino (1989, p. 397), see also the pair in the Pinacoteca Stuard reattributed to the artist by Ravelli (1986/87, p. 45), as well as the painting in the Galleria Alberoni in Parma, which Cirillo and Godi attributed to the older painter (1987, in: Crispo, 2000, p. 163).
According to Biagi Maino, the specific compositional features and delicate execution of the present painting speak against the attribution to Arbotoni suggested by Ravelli (1989, p. 394). This is additionally corroborated by the tour de force of the knife leaning diagonally against the first step and of the fork appearing on the top plane, the descending shadows of both of which follow a delightful play of perspective. These refined details rather comply with an artist of the High Baroque, i.e., the painter of the signed Still life with tuna, carp, oysters and plaice (Arisi, 1973 in: Biagi Maino, 1989, p. 399), to whom the Still life with copper kettle, plucked turkey and young goat in the Molinari Pradelli Collection and the Kitchen interior with dishes, a table, a shelf, two turkeys and a dog – which repeats a detail of the latter work – should be attributed as well: it comes as a surprise that both of these paintings have recently been given to the mediocre Arbotoni (Arisi in: La pittura in Emilia e Romagna. Il Seicento, II, Milan, 1993, p. 194; Cirillo, 1994, pp. 49/50; Ravelli, 2000, p. 45; Crispo, 2000, p. 164, fig. 162), whose oeuvre catalogue should be revised for reasons of coherence.

We are grateful to Professor Donatella Biagi Maino for cataloguing the present painting.