ATTRIBUTED TO JOSEFA DE ÓBIDOS Seville 1630 - Óbidos 1684 Still life with blue and white plate with raspberries ...

ATTRIBUTED TO JOSEFA DE ÓBIDOS Seville 1630 - Óbidos 1684 Still life with blue and white plate with raspberries, apples, hazelnuts, bird and ring Oil on panel size 24.3 x 36 cm This beautiful still life must be related to the versions of the same theme by the great Iberian Baroque painter Josefa de Óbidos. In the National Museum of Ancient Art in Lisbon there is a copy that shows the same apples that appear in the work that we are now making known. What's more, the vermilion red of raspberries, the artist's favorite color, is similar to that seen in her works. That taste for dispersing small fruits in the first place, as it happens here with hazelnuts, is another characteristic compositional resource of Josefa de Óvidos. Her preference for jewels and beads or pricked flowers in fruit bowls also belong to the creative world of the painter. Although she was born in Seville, Josefa de Ayala learned the rudiments of painting from her father Baltazar Gomes Figueira and Francisco Herrera el Viejo. After a brief stay in the convent of Santa Ana de Coimbra, she settled in Óbidos where she managed to emancipate herself, something unheard of for a woman of the time. There, together with his father's workshop, he signs juicy contracts that will provide him with huge benefits that translates into the purchase of farms, jewelry and other luxurious objects that he will use in his appreciated still lifes.