Bozelli, Felice

Felice Bozelli was the son of a wealthy shoemaker Christopher and Lucia Cattaneo. Very little is known about his education. In Milan, from 1664 to 1669, he was not a disciple of Joseph Karachi, but his brother Michelangelo. Then he met Angelo Maria Crivelli, who specialized in still lifes. The general intonation of his paintings and the fact that he liked to use several living figures in still lifes suggests that he adopted the style of Lombard painting. According to researchers, the Flemish school influenced his style, as well as the style of most Italian artists who wrote still lifes in the 17th and 18th centuries.

After a short stay in Piacenza, Bozelli moved to Parma (1670), where he writes works for the nobility and where on July 26, 1673 his wife Barbara Draghi (who died in 1731) gave birth to his only son, Oratio, who also became an artist.

Bozelli's paintings gave him, if not great fame, the opportunity for a comfortable life, as evidenced by the large number of his works in the noble houses of Parma and Piacenza, made in the fashion of that time: these works hung in the dining rooms and caused an appetite, while they were larger than in the living rooms and would be more suitable for a butcher shop or a vast kitchen, among black smoke and fragrant smells.

Bozelli belongs to the category of peasant still life artists: on his works there are game, gutted fish, dead birds, plucked chicken feathers, wooden vats with cabbage and turnips, located in the master's kitchens, worn stone steps or village tables. He weaves small pets, most often outbred cats (the cat that is most often found on his canvases called Feles or Felix - as well as the artist, which means “happy” and represents the author himself) and disheveled stray dogs among the chicken coop ; or villagers who wore the best holiday dress and brought their products to the market, with fingers still black from the ground and callused hands. For such an environment, he selected more dense and heavy tones, writing out small elevations and small gaps in dense landscapes from trees.

Bozelli also manifests himself as a villager with an extraordinary sense of humor and appears on a self-portrait in the National Gallery of Parma (circa 1720), dressed to the nines, with a palette in his hands and a curled wig, in a courtly pose, but with frisky and witty eyes, who watch the model outside the canvas with lively attention. Special attention is drawn to the game suspended on the right.

However, Bozelli wrote not only everyday scenes. For painting the theater he was called by Alessandro Fontanellato Sanvitale, where he worked from 1681 to 1690. Over the next ten years, he practically became the personal artist of Sanvital and, in addition to his usual still lifes with bleeding meat and fish, he painted portraits and decorative elements for the reception hall - an elegant frieze with vases filled with flowers surrounded by white winged griffins; Baroque cornices in curls and shells.

But the most beautiful series is six oval paintings in Soranje, made between 1700 and 1701, where figures of young people are woven into still lifes with fish and shellfish in the foreground against a landscape.

In 1702, he worked at the Church of St. Brigitte in Piacenza, the only image of a religious subject left from him, which is not unique, as in other similar cases with ancient religious works, often later lost. According to Cult-turist.ru Travel Portal: “Particularly noteworthy is the Crucifixion chapel (left nave), which got its name from the 13th century wooden Crucifix stored in it. Its walls are decorated with works by “Ecce Homo” (“Behold the Man”) Felice Bozelli and “St. Andrew” Gavasetti (1628). "Ascension" in the dome and the image of the Sibyls belong to the brush of the Flemish painter Robert de Longe (late 17th century). "

In 1704, he moved to Fontanellato, where he expressed his talent in twelve canvases of the myth “Diana and Acteon” (Parma, National Gallery) - frescoes in the rooms of the Parmigianino fortress, where Bozelli uses bright colors and originally modeled draperies.

Later, in the painting “The Boy and the Blind Beggar” (National Gallery of Parma), he was inspired by the Lombard school - Dutchman Peter van Laer, Roman Michelangelo Cherkuozzi and taking their tricks of dark shades of white and direct smear, depicting clothes in rags, ears and sensitive hands. There are four paintings made in the same style after 1710 for Sanvatale (National Gallery, Parma), with similar drawings and still lifes.

At the same time, he writes other works - “The Butcher Weighing Meat for the Poor Client” in the collections of Tsauli Naldi in Faenza, as well as the collections of Antonio Piacenza in Piacenza and Zaccia Rondinini Bologna, where his activities are shown in the best possible way, if we consider it in a certain way. way: silver spraying gives a reflection of light on a dark background, and often appears in the distance, like the first glimmer of dawn in the sky.

His paintings can be seen in many public and private collections in Parma and Piacenza, the Cremona Art Gallery, the Carrara Academy in Bergamo. In 1713 his works were inventoried in the impressive collection of Grand Duke Ferdinando Medici in Tuscany. Among the later works, the most famous are two Boselli still lifes in the Campori Modena Gallery, signed and dated on the reverse side of 1730, where the magical brilliance of his mature paintings disappears and the works become only a repetition of past success ^[4]

The description of Boselli's biography in the Monographs of Ferdinando Arizi is basic, but is taken into account with some amendments. His first monograph (1973), possibly has several incorrect attributions, but gives a very good general idea of ​​the cultural environment of Bozelli. Many amendments were made in his next work, "Still Life in Milan and Parma in the Baroque Era" ^[5] .

In the Russian collections, the work of the Bozelli circle can be found in the collection of the Museum of Private Collections of the International Institute of Antiques ^[6] , part of the ASG Investment Group of Companies ^[7] - “Pantry: still life with game, grapes, a basket of pears, asparagus and a vase with cherries”.