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拍品专文
On account of the rarity of her works, scholarly attention has only recently begun to focus on Orsola Maddalena Caccia’s activities as a painter. Orsola was one of eight children, including six daughters, born to the Mannerist painter Guglielmo Caccia and his wife Laura Olivia. Born Theodora Orsola in 1596, in 1620 she entered the Ursuline convent in Bianzè, which was strategically positioned between Mantua and the Duchy of Savoy, and changed her name to Orsola Maddalena. Due to ongoing warfare in the region, Guglielmo sought to move his daughters to a safer location and in 1625 founded a monastery in Moncalvo. There, Orsola and her short-lived sister, Francesca, trained the other nuns in the art of painting, with Orsola ultimately becoming abbess of the convent.
Orsola’s activities as a painter include both religious subjects and still lifes. It has even been suggested that she was the earliest Italian artist to paint a pure floral still life (several decades earlier the Flemish artist Jan Brueghel the Elder had produced a number of flower paintings while in the service of Cardinal Federico Borromeo). Her religious paintings, often altarpieces produced for churches in the Monferrat region, display figural types composed of geometric forms and a striking use of sfumato closely allied to her father’s style. By contrast, her still lifes are entirely her own. These paintings exhibit meticulously individuated and slightly idiosyncratic flowers, fruit and birds like those seen in the present painting. Typically placed on a simple ledge and set against a monochrome background, her compositions equally exhibit a captivating effect of surface pattern that suggests an awareness of northern European botanical prints.
The treatment of the bird and fruit in this painting is particularly close to a painting by Caccia in the Museo Civico Ala Ponzone, Cremona (fig. 1). We are grateful to Paola Caretta, curator of a 2012 exhibition on the artist held at the Castello di Miradolo, San Secondo di Pinerolo, for endorsing the attribution on the basis of a photograph (private correspondence, 25 February 2022).
Orsola’s activities as a painter include both religious subjects and still lifes. It has even been suggested that she was the earliest Italian artist to paint a pure floral still life (several decades earlier the Flemish artist Jan Brueghel the Elder had produced a number of flower paintings while in the service of Cardinal Federico Borromeo). Her religious paintings, often altarpieces produced for churches in the Monferrat region, display figural types composed of geometric forms and a striking use of sfumato closely allied to her father’s style. By contrast, her still lifes are entirely her own. These paintings exhibit meticulously individuated and slightly idiosyncratic flowers, fruit and birds like those seen in the present painting. Typically placed on a simple ledge and set against a monochrome background, her compositions equally exhibit a captivating effect of surface pattern that suggests an awareness of northern European botanical prints.
The treatment of the bird and fruit in this painting is particularly close to a painting by Caccia in the Museo Civico Ala Ponzone, Cremona (fig. 1). We are grateful to Paola Caretta, curator of a 2012 exhibition on the artist held at the Castello di Miradolo, San Secondo di Pinerolo, for endorsing the attribution on the basis of a photograph (private correspondence, 25 February 2022).