Artist

(b. 1720, Fano, d. 1806, Fano)

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Details

Carlo Magini was an Italian painter of the Baroque period. He painted still-lifes in a style reminiscent of Spanish bodegón paintings. In 1990, Pietro Zampetti carefully compiled a catalogue of the works of Carlo Magini. He had catalogued no less than ninety-eight still-lifes from among the corpus of the artist, a native of Fano (in the Marches region), whose creation in this domain nevertheless remains nearly undocumented. It became possible to identify a coherent group around this nucleus. Magini was documented as a figure painter - of portraits in particular - but he also developed his own speciality, in the form of table settings with different, apparently unrelated, elements in juxtaposition, with a focus on light and visibility. They are all composed along the same severe lines, in antithesis to typical baroque frivolity, and yet have borrowed from a highly original and effective naturalist aesthetic. The establishment of a timeline within this series of still-lifes remains elusive, as the works seem never to have been dated and rarely, if at all, documented. The signature in French, 'Charles Magini/peintre/Fano', found on several paintings, allowed this group to reclaim its true author, having previously been attributed to Paolo Antonio Barbieri and other supposedly French or Spanish Seicento masters. //

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Category	Artists
Artists by letter	M
Artist nationality	Italian