Storm at Sea

BORZONE FRANCESCO (1625-1679)
‘Storm at Sea’ oil
48 x 65 cm

Little is known about Francesco (or Francesco Maria) Borzone, son of the more famous Genoese Caravaggio follower Luciano Borzone, who was still alive when Raffaele Soprani wrote his Lives. The historian briefly recalls his activity with the ‘most Christian king’, that is, with Louis XIV in Paris. He was appointed member of the Acade’mie Royale in 1663 and as ‘peitre du roi’ he lodged in the great gallery of the Louvre.
The first identikit of the painter was drawn up by Giuliana Biavati who in 1979 took advantage of the discovery of a large signed work depicting a Storm at Sea (188 x 300 cm 5 illustrated here). The scholar offers a detailed critical essay on the artist which is still unsurpassed today for its wealth of information and notes on stylistic interpretation.
Thanks to this important ‘fixed point’ and by virtue of this comparison it is possible to recognize the hand of the same artist in this unpublished canvas. Despite the similarity of many subjects of this kind, the way in which the rocks were executed and the thread-like typology of the tiny figurines are particularly comforting for our attribution.

The painting is unpublished. For a reference bibliography on the painter see: G. Bivati ​​An identikit for Francesco Borzone in ‘Bollettino dei Musei Civici Genovesi’ 1679 pp. 42-63;
F. Borroni in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani vol. XIII 1971 pp. 159-160;
A. Orlando in Allgemeines-künsrlerlexikon vol. XIII 1996 p. 146