Still Life with Birds and Fruit

Garzoni was one of the few women artists to achieve prominence in Italy during the 1600s. She garnered fame with her naturalistic still lifes on vellum, which combined scientific accuracy with sensitive artistry. Here, three small goldfinches on fruit branches and a larger bee-eater are dispersed across an earth-toned ground. The goldfinches sit on branches from which hang two plums (left), a peach (center), and a pear (right). A yellow quince and purple fig appear in the left foreground. Garzoni’s refined interpretations of the natural world suited the taste of aristocratic patrons like the Medici family, who acquired her drawings to decorate their villas.

A horizontally oriented watercolor depicts four birds among pink and orange fruits with a few light-green leaves. On the upper right, three goldfinches with red and white faces and black- and brown-bodies with muted yellow wings, each sit on a fruit branch. On the left, a bee-eater bird twice the goldfinches' size with a long, thin beak, red-brown feathers, and blue on its chest, wings, and around the eye, faces our left, two fruit placed in front.

Still Life with Birds and Fruit

c. 1650

Giovanna Garzoni

(Italian, 1600–1670)

Italy

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