Roses and forget-me-nots in a glass vase with butterflies and a beetle on a wooden ledge

This painting was first assigned to Cittadini by Professor Luigi Salerno, who compared it to the artist's well-known pair of Flowers in Vases in the church of Santa Maria di Galliera in Bologna. Cittadini was close friends for many years with Bartolomeo Guerra, a priest at that Oratorian church, in whose sacristy as many as twelve of his original canvases were on public display. Due to a lack of dated works, the chronology of Cittadini's still lifes and landscapes has not yet been reconstructed despite excellent recent studies by Nicoletta Roio (in E. Negro and M. Pirondini, eds., La Scuola di Guido Reni, Modena, 1992, pp. 165-202) and Daniele Benati (in La natura morta in Emilia e in Romagna, Milan, 2000, pp. 84-97). An early date is perhaps suggested for the present Roses in a Glass Vase, which exhibits a technical refinement that Cittadini could have observed in Rome in the flower pieces of Daniel Seghers, a Fleming who collaborated with both Domenichino and Poussin. The simplicity of the composition, considered in conjunction with the close attention to the exquisite details of the rose petals and butterfly wings are other qualities that might indicate a date before the middle of the century.