1617 -1677 · Lombard Baroque and invention of musical still life

Silent lutes, broken strings, scores, dust and geometry make Evaristo Baschenis the masterful inventor of the still life of instruments.

Evaristo Baschenis was born in Bergamo in 1617 into a family where several generations practiced painting. Ordained priest, he also led a career as an artist and musician. After establishing his independent studio in 1643, he specialized almost entirely in still life, a genre then particularly alive in Lombardy. His two major repertoires are kitchens loaded with food and utensils, and especially tables where lutes, violins, viols, spruces, bows and scores accumulate. Baschenis does not paint these instruments as simple precious objects. Musician himself and collector of scores, he knows their construction, their use and the difficulty of their curved shapes. A formation linked to architectural perspective nourishes its daring shortcuts: diagonal handles, inverted boxes and table plans constitute compositions of rigorous geometry. The side light reveals wood, velvet, strings and sometimes a thin layer of dust. The abandoned instrument, the closed score or the broken string suspend time and introduce a meditation on silence, the fragility of harmony and the end of pleasures. His paintings are sought after by cultured families from Bergamo, Milan, Venice and Mantua. The Agliardi triptych brings together still life, portraits of musicians and self-portraits spruce. Died in Bergamo in 1677, Baschenis founded a genre taken up for more than a century. The "Evaristo Baschenis" selection notably compares Still Life with musical instruments. Its reading favors atmosphere.

Baschenis paints music at the moment it fell silent: geometry, dust and motionless rope make duration heard through silence.