(Milan circa 1690–1760 Parma)
A peacock, cocks, hens and other birds, with a landscape beyond,
oil on canvas, 231 x 160.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
European aristocratic collection, since the late 19th century

We are grateful to Gianluca Bocchi for confirming the attribution on the basis of a photograph.

Giovanni Crivelli was the son of the painter Angelo Maria Crivelli and is known by the name of Crivellino to distinguish him from his father, with whom he trained. The two worked together in Parma and in numerous instances their brushwork is hard to tell apart: like his father, Crivellino was a genre painter engaging in producing still lives and hunting scenes. In his Storia pittorica dell’Italia Luigi Lanzi reports that Crivellino’s main talent lay in his exceptional rendering of birds and fish – ‘il cui talento principale fu negli uccelli e ne’ pesci’ (see L. Lanzi, Storia Pittorica dell’Italia: dal Risorgimento delle belle arti fin presso alla fine del XVIII secolo, vol. III, Milan 1824, p. 591).

The present painting constitutes a significant example of Crivellino’s naturalistic style of execution in this depiction of birds: delicate lines painstakingly make up the peacock’s feathers, forming the centre of the composition; the same care is applied to the plumage of chicks, hens and cockerels gathering around it. The meticulous quality of the image, as well as the liveliness of the subject and the movement of the composition suggest a study from nature.