Francesco Caldei

Here his flower pieces with their Roman flavour and the pleasantness of composition earned the artist considerable commercial success with the Venetian bourgeoisie.

Only recent scholarship has identified the artist referred to in contemporary sources as 'Francesco Mantovano' was in fact properly called 'Francesco Caldei'.

[2] In 1613 the record of the souls of the parish of Santa Maria del Popolo in Rome notes that there was a painter living with four other persons in the house of Claudio Napoli.

In 1615 the record of the souls of the parish of San Lorenzo in Lucina in Rome a "Francesco Caldeo" is referred to as a 'servant' of Bartolomeo Manfredi and as still living with his master.

In the 1642 census of the Provveditori alla Sanità a Francesco Mantovano is recorded as living with a boy, perhaps an apprentice, and a woman.

The biographer Marco Boschini dedicated some quatrains to Francesco Mantovano and inserted a woodcut derived of one his paintings in a gallery of famous Venetian painters in his La carta del navegar pitoresco, which was published in 1660.

[2] In 1661 Caldei is cited as an expert and intermediary for the sale of statues owned by the nobleman Pietro Marcello to Charles II, Duke of Mantua and Montferrat.

It is believed that he collaborated with other painters such as Joseph Heintz the Younger and Giulio Carpioni and added still life elements or animals in their compositions.

Paintings in this genre typically show a flower or, less frequently, fruit garland around a devotional image or portrait.

[5] An example of Caldei's efforts in this genre are a pair of garland paintings of flowers surrounding an image of the angel Gabriel and the Virgin Annunciate (Sotheby's, 10 April 2013 London lot 95).

A pair of canvases depicting a Still Life with Vase of Flowers in a Coastal Landscape Setting (Sotheby's, 7 July 2011 London lot 219) shows his good knowledge of Heintz' paintings.

[7] They depict in the foreground vases with flowers, birds on the ground and in flight, a butterfly, a snail and in the background a seascape and glimpses of coastal cities surrounded by mountains.