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(Turin 1733-1819) Still life of fruit and flowers with silver tray 18th century Oil on canvas, 68 x 87.3 cm Publications: unpublished SOLD Michele was the brother of the well-known figure painter Vittorio Amedeo, with whom he had the opportunity to collaborate several times and, like him, was a court painter of the Savoy family (he is documented from 1763 for numerous works in Stupinigi, then in Palazzo Chiablese, in the Royal Palace, in the castle of Moncalieri and, from 1758, in the Reggia di Venaria). Michele Antonio Rapous is undoubtedly the most important exponent of Piedmontese still life and certainly one of the most significant eighteenth-century interpreters of this pictorial genre in Italy. The research conducted by the undersigned, which was included in the opening essay of the catalog of the Turin exhibition in 2000, made it possible to better define his work, publishing numerous unpublished paintings and led, among other things, to the discovery of the house in which the artist lived for a long time, which in the 1796 census is called "house of Count Robesti in Via Po, near the Albergo del Pozzo": it is a building at the beginning of the street, still existing, corresponding to the current number 10, later passed in 1819 to the Corte di Bonvicino. We also know that in his maturity the painter exhibited in the first Turin art exhibitions, at least in 1805 and in 1811 and 1812, and that he was also a refined painter of animals.... [Prof. Alberto Cottino]