Faustino Bocchi (attr.)

(Italia, 1659 - Italia, 1741)

Wedding Dance Rooster and Parrot (Marine) pair of oil on canvas, cm. 97x129 (slight color losses) For the Wedding Dance, completely similar to ours, see: M.Olivari, Faustino Bocchi e l'arte di figurar pygmiei 1659-1741, Milan, 1990, p. 98, no. A 67 (as La Vendemmia) Professor Mariolina Olivari, to whom our thanks go, when examining the photographic pendant, writes: "The canvas depicting The Wedding Ball certainly seems to me to be Bocchi's signature. However, I have doubts about the Marina (Rooster and Pappagallo) where there are differences. A different hand was certainly involved, perhaps from the workshop or from an imitator." Faustino Bocchi is best known for his lively depictions of dwarves, depicted in everyday and festive scenes, often dressed in sumptuous clothing and resembling the city dwellers of his time. These characters are the protagonists of games, ceremonies, weddings and even unlikely battles against animals such as crabs or storks, set in surreal landscapes. The hunting scenes, in particular, take on a grotesque tone due to the exaggerated size of the creatures being chased. Unlike traditional genre paintings, Bocchi prefers fantastic and whimsical settings rather than real and everyday ones. When inspired by everyday life, his works recall the comic theater of the time, without moral or religious intentions. His humorous style, which made him famous, is reflected in small decorative paintings designed to entertain and embellish the elegant noble homes of the eighteenth century, both in the city and in the countryside. These works, frivolous and playful, also offer a significant insight into the artistic taste of the time. Probably a pupil of the Flemish painter Angiolo Everardi, Bocchi dedicated himself not only to comic painting, but also to botanical subjects, animals and battle scenes. From his master he assimilated the Flemish style, which dominated the Brescia art scene between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, to the point of considering Brescia a center of Italian-Flemish art. Except for a possible trip to Florence, he always lived and worked in Brescia, where over time he abandoned the dark tones typical of the Flemish tradition to adopt a brighter and more pastoral style, in line with the Lombard taste of the 18th century.