Antonio Cifrondi

Antonio Cifrondi (Clusone 1656-Brescia 1730) - Woman with hen, 1700-1730 84x105 cm Oil painting on canvas Work devoid of frame. "In a bare, flattened bluish background, the only reference to an external spatiality, the figure of a hunched elderly woman emerges from the half-light, her forehead furrowed with wrinkles and her sturdy arms - tried by hard work in the earth - delineating her role as a countrywoman. With a restrained, naturalistic composition, the woman can be considered the true protagonist of the painting even though, in reading her vacant gaze -- tried by fatigue and age -- the observer is invited to focus on the candid bird, delicately perched on a perch filled with hay. The image of the woman is modeled by means of broad, textural brushstrokes imbued with sparse, warm colors, evidently perceptible in the rosy hues of the complexion, sharing in the earthy shadows that contribute to the figure's plasticity. The peculiarities of the work, its formal characteristics are affected by the influences of Lombard painting, so much so as to make it close to those secular subjects so much in vogue in the last decades of the 17th century. However, the stylistic character revealed by the chromatic sobriety allows the work to be assigned to Antonio Cifrondi of Bergamo and placed within the first thirty years of the 18th century." ASORstudio