Italian school; 17th century.

Italian school; XVII century.
"Still life with hare, duck and partridges".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Presents restorations and Repainting on the pictorial surface.
It has a frame with damage caused by xylophages.
Illegible signature in the lower left area.
Measurements: 48 x 64 cm; 68,5 x 86 cm (frame).
Leaning on a table that crosses longitudinally the whole scene, there is a hare and several dead birds. The artist, who follows a classic approach to still life representation, presents the animals from a low perspective that allows the objects to be perceived clearly and with greater monumentality, offering a detailed view of them. Although the composition is usually based on horizontals and verticals, reinforcing the static, the author of this painting has introduced some diagonals that provide a certain baroque dynamism, although carefully contained. Restraint also characterizes the color, which shines illuminated by the clear light, which is reflected in a totally theatrical way on the skin of the animals. The objects are piled up and their textures and qualities contrast, but the image is unified by the careful treatment of light, which fills some areas with brightness and leaves others in shadow, creating depth in a very realistic way.
During the 17th century there was a growing demand for paintings to decorate the houses of the bourgeoisie. Apart from portraits and large canvases with religious, historical or mythological themes, artists specialized, painting medium-sized works that gradually increased in format, with still lifes, animals, landscapes and genre scenes. The paintings that reproduce collectors' cabinets of the time are explicit in this respect, to the point of originating a new autonomous pictorial genre. Undoubtedly, the future of this painting would have been different without the development of the still life genre, whose theme revolutionized the artistic panorama, introducing a new fully baroque way and bringing a sense of unity and opulent sumptuousness to the orderly and encyclopedic sample that were the precious descriptions of nature.