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拍品專文
In 1950, Giuseppe Fiocco attributed a pair of flower still lifes in the Museo Diocesano, Trent to Francesco Guardi. A large group of stylistically related works – including several with false signatures – was subsequently assembled around those works. Many of the pictures follow the same tripartite compositional formula as the present painting and are clearly the work of one artist, though scholars remained divided over their authorship. Though doubts were expressed by Egidio Martini in 1964, several flower pieces were included in the great Mostra dei Guardi exhibition in Venice the following year and Antonio Morassi continued to support the attribution, cataloguing a selection of flower paintings in his 1973 monograph (E. Martini, La pittura veneziana del Settecento, Venice, 1964, pp. 278-279; P. Zampetti, Mostra dei Guardi, Venice, 1965, nos. 153-159; A. Morassi, Guardi, I, Venice, 1973, pp. 499-500, nos. 1019-1027; II, figs. 911-919). Indeed, at the time of this painting’s sale in 1997 it was sold with a photocopy of a certificate by Antonio Morassi, dated May 1961, as by Francesco Guardi.
Since then, scholarly opinion has tended toward skepticism. Luigi Salerno christened the author of these still lifes the 'Pseudo-Guardi', while Eduard Safarik and Francesca Bottari explored qualitative differences among the group and gave them to an unknown painter in Guardi’s ambit (see L. Salerno, La natura morta in Italia, Rome, 1984, pp. 314-315 and E. Safarik and F. Bottari in La natura morta in Italia, I, Milan, 1989, pp. 342-3 respectively). The problem remains open, and may now be seen as but one of several deriving from our lack of knowledge of the Guardi brothers' working procedures. Flowers feature prominently in a number of the Guardi brothers’ figure paintings and Giuseppe Maria Pilo convincingly attributed to Francesco six altar fronts painted with flowers in the Redentore, Venice (G.M. Pilo, Francesco Guardi: I paliotti, Milan, 1983). Furthermore, X-radiographs have revealed flower pieces beneath view paintings by Francesco Guardi (see, for instance, E. Garberson in D. De Grazia and E. Garberson, The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue: Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Washington, 1996, p. 129 and p. 125, fig. 1). While the tendency remains to doubt the Guardi brothers' authorship of the autonomous still lifes (see M. Merling in ibid., p. 153), to place their execution outside the Guardi workshop would be contrary to the existing evidence.
Since then, scholarly opinion has tended toward skepticism. Luigi Salerno christened the author of these still lifes the 'Pseudo-Guardi', while Eduard Safarik and Francesca Bottari explored qualitative differences among the group and gave them to an unknown painter in Guardi’s ambit (see L. Salerno, La natura morta in Italia, Rome, 1984, pp. 314-315 and E. Safarik and F. Bottari in La natura morta in Italia, I, Milan, 1989, pp. 342-3 respectively). The problem remains open, and may now be seen as but one of several deriving from our lack of knowledge of the Guardi brothers' working procedures. Flowers feature prominently in a number of the Guardi brothers’ figure paintings and Giuseppe Maria Pilo convincingly attributed to Francesco six altar fronts painted with flowers in the Redentore, Venice (G.M. Pilo, Francesco Guardi: I paliotti, Milan, 1983). Furthermore, X-radiographs have revealed flower pieces beneath view paintings by Francesco Guardi (see, for instance, E. Garberson in D. De Grazia and E. Garberson, The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue: Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries, Washington, 1996, p. 129 and p. 125, fig. 1). While the tendency remains to doubt the Guardi brothers' authorship of the autonomous still lifes (see M. Merling in ibid., p. 153), to place their execution outside the Guardi workshop would be contrary to the existing evidence.