Francesco Lavagna (Naples, 1684 – 1749) Still life with flowers Oil on canvas, cm 62 x 48 Frame 66 x 81 The Still Life with Flowers under examination can be compared to the production of the Neapolitan painter Francesco Lavagna (Naples, 1684 – 1749). There are few documents on the artist, often confused with Giuseppe Lavagna, with whom he almost certainly shared a kinship, cited by the biographer of Neapolitan painters, sculptors and architects Bernardo de Dominici as a pupil of the great painter Andrea Belvedere. Francesco became a painter in a style close to Gaspare Lopez (?- Naples approx. 1732), an important Neapolitan still life painter. Since Lopez is recorded among the pupils of Andrea Belvedere's school, some scholars believe that, even without documentary support but based on the stylistic analysis of the works, Francesco Lavagna's training path may have been the same. Lavagna's figure has recently been reconstructed thanks to two canvases passed through the antiques market in the early 1980s, one of which clearly signed "Fran.° Lavagna P.". These works have then allowed, thanks to the many stylistic references with canvases that have appeared on the market, to reconstruct, still partially, the productive history of the artist who is configured as an elegant interpreter of the new pictorial trend of Neapolitan still life, closer to the French taste, more decorative and imaginative. Lavagna favors compositions formed by cascades of flowers and fruit, usually set outdoors, accompanied by vases, jugs, ancient ruins, statues of female figures and animals. Another distinctive feature of the painter is the addition of ceramics with delicate light blue coloring, not only a chromatic expedient with decorative purpose but also a testimony to the refined taste for the craftsmanship that arrived in large ports such as Naples. In this canvas the painter offers a particularly vivid and peculiar passage of a vase of multicolored flowers arranged with apparent randomness; among them you can recognize large roses, white and lilac carnations with frayed petals, candid small bellflowers and tulips. The chromatic score based on the soft colors of blues, greens and pinks, with bursts of intense reds, refers to other examples of the Neapolitan painter's production, as does the vase with its delicate blue color. The object is in good condition