Evaristo Baschenis

Baschenis, along with the more eccentric 16th-century painter Milanese Arcimboldo, represents provincial outputs with idiosyncratic tendencies that appear to appeal to the discernment of forms and shapes rather than grand manner themes of religious or mythologic events.

The rapid success achieved by the painter early on in Bergamo and other Italian centers (Milan, Venice, Turin, Florence, Rome) is attested to not only by the numerous works present in the private collections of the time and by the large number of copies and imitations derived by anonymous painters from his models (a trend which came to be known as the maniera bergamasca, and which persisted down to the beginning of the nineteenth century), but also by the written sources, which praise Baschenis's extraordinary capacity for realistic representation and his inventiveness.

In the very year of his death (1677), a brief but significant testimonial by Father Donato Calvi, prior of the Monastery of Sant'Agostino in Bergamo and a fine connoisseur a of the arts, offered praise of the painter which is also a useful guide to the way in which Baschenis's work was understood by the people of the time: Having rendered himself outstanding in painting objects from nature, especially inanimate ones, and unequaled in depicting instruments and figures of the liberal arts, he swiftly walked the path of immortality.In Mgr.

But the writer's enthusiasm is soundly based upon critical reasons, or at least upon those of taste: «In painting your worship has arrived at that fullness that can grant perfection and the ultimate exquisiteness of art.

Rome recalls it with the virtuousity of your paintings, Florence speaks of it with the images of your pigments, Venice echoes with the delicacies of your hand and Turin celebrates the prodigious strokes of your style.