| Very likely the greatest Italian still-life painter, Evaristo Baschenis is credited with inventing a new type of still life using musical instruments placed in pleasing arrangements. Baschenis meticulously described lutes, mandolins, and violins, then being fabricated by the Amati family of nearby Cremona. Sober, reflective, and nearly reverential in their calm, Baschenis's still lifes are often seen as precocious examples of pure formalism. Nevertheless, the subject matter must have carried many subtle meanings which were undoubtedly important for the viewer. Unplayed, the instruments invite consideration of sound, and touch, as well as of sight, while the arrangements are a kind of visual poetry that transcends the materialism of the objects portrayed and becomes a purely spiritual meditation. Baschenis's life seems to have been uneventful–an ordained priest, Prevarisco or "Prete Evaristo," evidently spent his entire life quietly at work in his native Bergamo. Baschenis's teacher is unknown, but Enea Salmeggia, Giovan Paolo Cavagna, or Francesco Zucco have been suggested. Regardless of with whom Baschenis studied, it is known that by 1647 he had an independent career and was successful enough to employ an assistant, who worked closely in his style and whose initials B.B. are found on numerous works done in the manner of Baschenis. In his own lifetime Baschenis was revered as a talented painter whose works were collected by courtly circles in Rome, Florence, Venice, and Turin. Though Baschenis is best known for his still-lifes featuring musical instruments, he sometimes included them in still life arrangements with portraits, notably the triptych of paintings he produced for the Agliardi family of Bergamo, still in the family collection there. Baschenis also occasionally tried his hand at arrangements of fruit or poultry. Perhaps these were early still-life experiments before he developed his justifiably celebrated still Iifes of musical instruments. Baschenis's pupil, Bartolomeo Bettera (1639?-post 1687), and Bettera's son, Bonaventura Bettera (1663?-post 1718), as well as other local painters, imitated Baschenis's style, but these followers, who can be classified as a Bergamesque school of instrument painters, never attained the master's quality. |
