MARGHERITA CAFFI
(Cremona, 1647 - Milan, 20 September 1710)

Pupil and perhaps nephew of Vincenzo Volò, Margherita was born in 1650; 1651 and married Ludovico Caffi, an artist specialized in flower and carpet painting. The activity was carried out in Cremona, in Piacenza (1670 - 1682) and then in Milan, while the number of canvases present in the Medici collections suggest a Florentine stay. Certainly his critical and commercial success was very rapid and his paintings are mentioned in almost all the ancient inventories of the Lombard and Emilian area. There is no doubt that his art marks the eighteenth-century turning point for the naturamortistico genre, thanks to the loose drafting, to the fringed brushstrokes of an early Rococo flavor, according to a style that also contaminates the production of Elisabetta Marchioni (active in Rovigo in the second half of the 17th century) . The canvas in question is a good example of his happy talent, probably to be placed in the Piacenza period or in the Milanese period just after, as the structure of the composition and the formal orientations place it in my opinion very close to the overdoor of Palazzo Rota Pisaroni in Piacenza.