BASCHENIS, Evaristo

Evaristo Baschenis was the leading still-life painter of seventeenth-century Italy. He loved the sensuous musical instruments of his day, whose satiny finishes and graceful curves he captured with striking virtuosity. The three canvases, Baschenis’s masterpiece called the Agliardi Triptych, were executed for the artist’s aristocratic patrons, Counts Ottavio, Bonifacio, and Alessandro Agliardi in Bergamo. The triptych includes portraits of the three brothers and a self-portrait of the artist playing instruments.

The central picture of the triptych depicts a still-life with musical instruments: two lutes, cittern, mandola, guitar, spinet. Other represented objects are sheet music, sheets with lute tablatures, cabinet, bowl of apples, carnation, knife, pear. The extraordinary orthogonal of the two lutes and the mandola, leading toward the right, is contrasted in a refined play of crossed and converging diagonals with the sequence formed by the spinet, bowl of apples, and guitar.

Evaristo Baschenis was the leading still-life painter of seventeenth-century Italy. He loved the sensuous musical instruments of his day, whose satiny finishes and graceful curves he captured with striking virtuosity. The three canvases, Baschenis’s masterpiece called the Agliardi Triptych, were executed for the artist’s aristocratic patrons, Counts Ottavio, Bonifacio, and Alessandro Agliardi in Bergamo. The triptych includes portraits of the three brothers and a self-portrait of the artist playing instruments.

The first picture of the triptych shows a musical performance, with the somber, middle-aged painter at the spinet and Ottavio Agliardi with an archlute. The table, sumptuously covered with a multicoloured carpet, bears the instruments of work and leisure: books, musical instruments (mandola, guitar, violone), a score, a piece of pear, all depicted with virtuoso foreshortening.

Evaristo Baschenis was the leading still-life painter of seventeenth-century Italy. He loved the sensuous musical instruments of his day, whose satiny finishes and graceful curves he captured with striking virtuosity. The three canvases, Baschenis’s masterpiece called the Agliardi Triptych, were executed for the artist’s aristocratic patrons, Counts Ottavio, Bonifacio, and Alessandro Agliardi in Bergamo. The triptych includes portraits of the three brothers and a self-portrait of the artist playing instruments.

The third picture of the triptych depicts a musical performance with Alessandro Agliardi with a guitar and Bonifacio Agliardi. Other represented objects are a guitar, an archlute , and bound books. The monumental volumes resting prominently on the table document the three brothers’ interests in legal history and literature.

This painting is one of Baschenis’s rare portraits.

This kitchen still-life depicts game (partridges, quails, pheasant, wild duck), chickens on a cutting board, urn, basket of biscuits, and casserole. Although the composition appears disordered, it is actually organized within a rigorous right-angled triangle formed by the vertical of the large terracotta urn supporting a basket of sweetmeats, the horizontal of the wildfowl laid out on the stone counter, and the ascending diagonal on the right.

A number of musical instruments are placed in apparent disorder on a large table with carved legs, the top of which crosses the canvas horizontally. A dark green cloth placed loosely on it reveals to the left an open drawer from which a musical score hangs out. The falling fabric subtly breaks the strict symmetry of the table, producing the illusion of an attractive contour similar to the many found among the instruments. The diagonal light creates a mysterious chiaroscuro, completely effacing the extremely bare d�cor and highlighting the subject of the painting, in which a sensuously curved bass viol dominates. This instrument, back to us, is surrounded at both ends by two wood and ivory marquetry guitars. In the foreground we see, from left to right, a cittern, a mandola, and a small violin placed on its spine with its bow. In the background to the right are a lute and a flute. The scattered musical scores and a few soft-coloured ribbons provide some light touches to a mostly dark-toned composition.

The warm, velvety precious materials of the objects are displayed with a rare mastery by the precise drawing, the raking light and the refined nuances of the brown, bronze and light yellow colours. Sobriety, reserve, harmony, rhythm and austerity govern the composition of this very noble composition. No decorative draperies, no superfluous details, but an expertly constructed picture in which volumes and planes are geometrically placed and which prefigures the still-lifes of the analytic Cubists. The instruments left lying, mute, at the end of a concert, and the presence to the right of two small decomposing apples, and the silence haunting the picture all evoke the precariousness and brevity of life. Here we have all the symbols of a Vanitas or a Memento mori.

When the picture arrived in the museum in 1908, the nearly invisible signature was exposed. This marked the beginning of the rediscovery and recognition of the work of Evaristo Baschenis, who had been nearly totally forgotten over time. This Bergamo artist also painted a number of kitchen interiors decorated with fruit, vegetables and dead animals, but owes his reputation to his still-lifes composed of musical instruments, of which the present one is probably the most perfect.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 5 minutes):

Biagio Marini: Sonata in echo

This painting is one of the most successful examples of Baschenis’s lifetime pursuit: the painting of still-lifes of musical instruments. It shows the artist’s unflagging attention to the forms of his subjects, which are geometrical and capricious at the same time. The instruments are studied under a light that reveals their inner poetry but leaves their age-old shape and substance intact. Lovingly selected, these mandolins and horns are seen in terms of a strict construction of shadowed tones, broken only occasionally by a lighter passage. Their arrangement suggests an illusory, unchanging fixity, as if a symphony had been transposed from sound into three-dimensional composition, after the music had stopped.

The instruments represented are a clarinet, a mandolin, a double-bass bow and - on the crest - a recorder.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 12 minutes):

Antonio Vivaldi: Concerto in G major for two mandolins and orchestra, RV 532

This still-life is a representative work of Evaristo Baschenis. It depicts a conglomeration of musical instruments and books lying in careless abandon atop a crimson damask tablecloth. The warm tonalities of the instruments, which absorb the rich red of the fabric, permeate the painting with an intimate glow. The light streaming from the upper right corner reflects from the polished curved surfaces of the inlaid lute and guitar while accentuating the creamy, sensuously curved pages lying atop and below the spinet.

Because he was in holy orders, Baschenis is sometimes referred to as Father Evaristo. The Bergamese Baschenis was, more than anything else, the perfect example of a “specialist” painter. In fact nearly all his oeuvre was dedicated to painting musical instruments, sometimes his pictures being finished by other painters who added figures (as in the case of two paintings that have recently been found in the Brera in Milan). From this specific point of view, Baschenis is one of the most fascinating and focused painters of the whole of the seventeenth century. His use of realism and light is reminiscent of Caravaggio. His canvases had an intense quality which was dominated by his exceptional technical ability (one thing that stands out is the way in which he depicted dust on the back of stringed instruments).

But Baschenis’ work never degenerated into a mere display of virtuoso talent. It was rather directed to convey a sense of almost severe moral purpose. Baschenis’ success with still-life gave rise, especially in Bergamo itself, to a real fashion for the genre, with other painters following his example.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 2 minutes):

Francesco da Milano: Tre fantasie for lute

Evaristo Baschenis is universally acknowledged as the inventor of the musical instrument still-life and its most celebrated practitioner. He was himself a practicing musician who clearly had a deep understanding of the instruments that he painted. The instruments in the present painting are: a theorbo; below it a mandolino; a Venetian lute; a pentagonal spinet; a violin; an ebony inlaid guitar, and a harp. The red damask cloth and the richly embroidered drapery overhead recur in other works by Baschenis.

The art of Baschenis represents a peculiar chapter in the development of Italian still-life painting: through it the Bergamo School suddenly became famous, and since he had many followers and pupils, the genre of still-life painting with instruments became widely practiced. His large ceremonial compositions are his most characteristic and best works. The moderate and cheerful realism of his style was inspired by Caravaggio, but it remained free of the soul-searching dilemma encountered by the painters of seventeenth-century Rome, Naples and Florence. In his choice of themes and objects he was probably influenced by the world-famous instrument-making shop at nearby Cremona, which, for example, produced the beautiful lutes and violins of the Amati family.

In Baschenis’s paintings the instruments are the mediums of the Vanitas idea, and they are seldom coupled with the more expressive images of skulls, candles or books. In themselves a violin with its strings broken or a dusty lute are symbols of mortality. In this painting a single flower accentuates the meaning, and the presence of the globe makes it universally valid. Even the jewel-inlaid ebony writing desk is not merely decorative counterpoint in the red-gold-blue-green-brown harmony; rather it invokes the vanity of sciences as well. The two lutes laid down across each other and the violin rendered in side-view reveal the painter’s excellent knowledge of the instruments’ anatomy.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 3 minutes):

Lodovico Viadana: La Bergamasca

Baschenis, an artist from Bergamo, was a highly specialized painter who worked almost exclusively on the portrayal of stringed instruments. The nearby town of Cremona, a famous centre of violin and lute making, provided him with his models. However, unlike the Netherlandish artists, who often used musical instruments as symbols of hearing, while the transience of the notes recalled the transience of life, Baschenis does not paint scenes of allegorical or moral significance. His emphasis lies on the aesthetic and decorative aspects, as reflected in his singular attention to painterly and ornamental detail in portraying these instruments.

A theorbo, a tenor lute and a descant lute, as well as a violin with bow can be seen together with a writing box, a quill and a book of music set on a table against which a cello is leaning. A mysterious life develops between these objects. The mild sheen on the surface of the woods and the changing hues on the body of the lute create a visual autonomy that almost makes us forget the actual purpose of these instruments. Their curves present unusual viewpoints as though by chance. These musical objects are an almost tangible feast of tranquillity for the eyes.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 14 minutes):

George Frideric Handel: Concerto for harp, lute and theorbo in B flat major