Still Life with Farmyard Animals, Guinea Pigs, and Pigeons

The painting has a particularly complex attributional history. Formerly in the collection of Prince Argoutinsky until 1941, it was exhibited at the 1929 Brussels Exhibition as a work by Christoffel Puytlinck, on the basis of its compositional structure and Northern character, both of which closely evoke the Flemish tradition (1). In 1984, it reappeared on the art market at Finarte under an attribution to Anton Maria Vassallo, thereby placing it within the context of Genoese still-life painting (2). Subsequently, while the whereabouts of the work remained unknown, Anna Orlando proposed the correct attribution to Domenico Guidobono in a chapter of Mary Newcome’s monograph on the artist, developing an attribution she had already advanced in her earlier studies (3). Nevertheless, in 2025 the painting appeared at auction at Dorotheum under the earlier attribution to Puytlinck, and in 2026 at Lucas in Milan as a work by Franz Werner Tamm (4). The painting should ultimately be attributed to Domenico Guidobono, although the subject is relatively rare within his oeuvre, a circumstance that likely contributed to the repeated changes in attribution.