BEGINNINGS IN NORTHERN ITALY (text page)
In the field of 16th-century painting, while the over-refined taste for Mannerism developed in various parts of Europe, the masters most attentive to "natural" objects were above all painters who were active in Flanders (in Antwerp, in particular) and in northern Italy. These two important areas - among other things, in reciprocal and intense contact with each other - shared the "primacy" in the birth of still life. During the second half of the 16th century, the evolution, which especially involved the province of Lombardy and Bologna, followed two quite distinct cultural lines. In Bologna, thanks to the figure of the scientist Ulisse Aldrovandi and his relations with the Florentine Court of the Medici family and with Jacopo Ligozzi, who was active there, the naturalistic image developed, as faithful as possible to the real thing, with intentions of classification and study. The representation of 'naturalia' was present in Cremona and Bologna in subjects such as the sellers of fruit and animals of Vincenzo Campi, and the poulterers and fishmongers of Bartolomeo Passerotti. In Lombardy, several ideas of Leonardo da Vinci were taken up again and adapted to the new times: flowers, fruits, inanimate objects were interpreted in a key of intense dignity, not just as a proof of an ability to imitate nature, and the objects of optical research, but also as bearers of dense allegorical, symbolic or moral significances. The prevalence of content over form and formal progression which started from the artists connected with the court of Rodolfo II (Arcimboldo, Figino) and which was prolonged into the early decades of the 17th century in the concentrated representations of dishes of fruit, with Fede Galizia and Panfilo Nuvolone, could be interpreted in this new sense. Furthermore, in the middle of the 17th century, Lombard painting was enriched by another extraordinary specialist in still life: Evaristo Baschenis from Bergamo, who was famous mostly for his compositions involving musical instruments.