Neapolitan School

17th Century

Flowers in a glass vase with a potted amaranthus tricolour with fruit on a stone ledge, before a landscape

Footnotes

Provenance
The Alvarez de Toledo family, USA, for more than 100 years

Stylistically the present lot comes close to the work of 17th century still life painters such as Giuseppe Recco, and intriguingly two works assigned by R. Causa to Marco de Caro (Galleria Nazionale, Rome, and Accademia di San Luca, Rome), which were widely believed to be by the same hand, and had previously been attributed to Giuseppe Recco. The presence of the monogram 'MDC' in the present work might suggest Marco de Caro as a possible author. In 1680 the artist is recorded as enrolling in the guild of painters in Naples, making him a rough contemporary of Andrea Belvedere. His existence as a painter rests on two still lifes signed 'Marco di Caro', formerly in the Canessa Collection, Rome (see: R. Causa, 'La Natura morta a Napoli nel Sei e Settecento', in Storia di Napoli, 1972, p. 1026, fig. 421; and Luigi Salerno, Still life painting in Italy, 1984, p. 255, fig. 69.1).


The Alvarez de Toledo family played a very prominent role in the political life of Spain and her empire with a viceroy of Naples and a Governor of the Netherlands amongst their number. In 1802, Cayetana de Silva y Alvarez de Toledo died without heir and so the dukedom of Alba was inherited by a relative, Carlos Miguel Fitz-James Stuart, but other branches of the family continue to hold other historical titles.