Antonio Cifrondi (Clusone 1656-Brescia 1730) - Woman with hen, 1700-1730

Oil painting on canvas 84x105cm Work without frame. "In a bare and flattened bluish background, the only reference to an external spatiality, the figure of an elderly bent woman emerges from the half-light, with a forehead furrowed by wrinkles and robust arms - tested by hard work in the earth - which outline her role as a country girl. With a sober naturalistic composition, the woman can be considered the true protagonist of the painting even if, in reading her lax gaze - tried by tiredness and age - the observer is invited to focus on the candid bird, delicately perched on a perch filled with hay. The image of the woman is modeled through broad and material brushstrokes imbued with lean and warm colors, evidently perceptible in the rosy hues of the incarnate, shared in the earthy shadows that help bring out the plasticity of the figure.The peculiarities of the work, its formal characteristics are affected by the influences of Lombard painting, t so as to make it close to those profane subjects so popular in the last decades of the seventeenth century. However, the stylistic code revealed by the chromatic sobriety allows us to assign the work to Antonio Cifrondi from Bergamo and to place it within the first thirty years of the 18th century."ASORstudio< /div>