Bologna

This delightful painting on copper within an elaborate ebony frame with sixteen inserts of baroque pearls and semiprecious stones is the work of the Bolognese painter Francesco Cavazzoni, author of important public commissions at the end of the sixteenth century. Cavazzoni alternated altarpieces, often of large dimensions, with small paintings on copper of Nordic and Flemish inspiration intended for a private clientele. Drawing inspiration from the vast repertoire of prints that were in circulation at the time and coming from beyond the Alps, Cavazzoni specialized in small works of refined quality like other Flemish artists such as Denis Calvaert, who had settled at the time in Bologna, the second city of the papacy and with a wealthy clientele, both ecclesiastical and private. The success of Cavazzoni’s inventions explains the diaspora of some of his paintings such as the signed altarpiece with the Miracle of the Finding of the True Cross purchased in 1968 by Bob Jones University in Greenville or the copper presented here, which ended up in a Spanish collection, probably since the seventeenth century.

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