1644 - CARLO MANIERI

CARLO MANIERI Still Life with Flowers, Fruit, a Parrot, and Pottery Pair of oil paintings on canvas, 65x117 cm These two important canvases are masterpieces by Carlo Manieri, a painter originally from Taranto who was active in Rome as early as 1655. The painter, whose life and work have been the subject of seminal studies by the Bocchi family, was the creator of sumptuous still lifes depicting carpets, draperies, silverware, flowers, and fruits in the decorative style pioneered in Rome by Fioravanti beginning in the fourth decade of the seventeenth century. His canvases are characterized by a tendency to saturate the spaces, following a scenic approach also used by Maltese, an artist with whom Manieri was often confused. He worked for the leading Roman families and ran a thriving workshop, capable of meeting the demands of a clientele increasingly inclined toward Baroque ostentation. Key Bibliography: G. Bocchi, U. Bocchi, Still-Life Painters in Rome: Italian Artists 1630–1750, Viadana 2005, pp. 525–576 G. Bocchi, U. Bocchi, Carlo Manieri, Painter in Rome in the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century: New Findings and Definitive Confirmations, in *Parma per l’Arte*, 2016, p. 297