Francesco Conti

(Firenze, 1681 - 1760)

Expert report by Professor Claudio Strinati.
Annunciation

(oil on canvas, 101 x 69 cm with frame)

This is a work which, due to its style (the lively and animated composition of the figures and draperies) and iconography (the Archangel Gabriel and the Virgin are both standing and of equal height and presence in space), must be dated to the early eighteenth century, reflecting in part the pictorial culture of the Roman school of Carlo Maratta, probably still alive when the painting we are examining here was created; and in part the legacy of the Florentine Baroque school, less known today but extremely flourishing and rich in personality, especially after the passage of Pietro da Cortona and Ciro Ferri through the city, who left behind notable masterpieces whose echoes can also be perceived in our painting.

For stylistic reasons, I believe that the author of the beautiful painting under examination here should be identified as the Florentine Francesco Conti, who from a very young age was in close contact with the Morandi school in Rome (where he was a pupil of the eminent Giovanni Maria Morandi), but who then followed his own path which led him, upon returning to Florence in time, to achieve brilliant results in the field of Tuscan Baroque painting, characterised by those characteristics of wit, formal elegance, and graceful dynamism, all of which I believe can be found in our work.

A comparison with one of Conti's early masterpieces, the altarpiece of the Trinity in the Florentine church of San Jacopo sopr' Arno, datable to the end of the first decade of the eighteenth century, leads me to recognize the same hand in our painting. Moreover, it is curious how the model of the Eternal Father, with a singular baldness and a sparse, nervous beard, seems exactly the same both in the altarpiece mentioned and in our painting where he is canonically depicted while sending on the

earth the Holy Spirit in the form of a dove.

I conclude that our painting is an interesting and very beautiful testimony of the

the beginnings of an artist who is certainly less celebrated today than his other eminent fellow countrymen

and contemporaries, but of notable interest and as such cited with merit both in the writings of

old art historians, as well as those of some masters of twentieth-century historiography

like Matteo Marangoni who in his important essay Settecentisti (but not

too) Florentines, in his volume Baroque Art, Florence Vallecchi 1973 (II ed.) put

Conti's relevance is clearly highlighted with arguments that are still very valid today

Our work, therefore, is of remarkable historical significance and of fine artistic quality, guaranteed by its excellent state of conservation.

I therefore believe that the value of the painting under examination here stands, based on the current conditions of the national market as of the date of this appraisal, at 25,000 euros.

Sincerely, Claudio Strinati