Melons, grapes, peaches and other fruit with birds and vegetables, including asparagus, artichokes, parsnips and mushrooms,
oil on canvas, 147 x 240 cm, unframed

Provenance:
Private European collection

The present imposing still-life painting is a rich depiction of fruit and vegetables, some of which are eccentrically shaped. The fruits are arranged in a balanced fashion though giving leeway for variety; they are depicted with great realism and accented contrasts of chiaroscuro.

Despite the apparent bunching up of fruits and vegetables, each single item is carefully studied to attain perspectival depth. The botanical attention with which each individual species is distinguished, is distinctive of the Roman ambit around 1630s, as is the use of light to define volume.

From the end of the sixteenth century, still-life painting in Italy began to have an increasingly autonomous role: flowers, fruits, vegetables and birds were no longer subordinate, being used only as decorative elements in painted festoons and vines, instead they became a subject of interest in themselves to be represented on canvas.

Rome became the centre from which this kind of production radiated. During these years the city was in perpetual ferment: the sub-culture from which these still-lives emanated was moulded by scientific experimentation and an erudite curiosity in nature (see D. Simone, Aspetti della natura morta romana, in: A. Bacchi/F. Mambelli/E. Sambo [eds.], La natura morta di Federico Zeri, Bologna 2015, p. 271). Giovanni Baglione tells how the Roman Giovanni Battista Crescenzi, possibly a painter and certainly an aristocrat, played a leading role in the development and promotion of still-life painting at the start of the century, by welcoming young painters into his palazzo with the aim of establishing an academy dedicated to naturalism (G. Baglione, Le vite de’ pittori, scultori et architetti etc., Rome 1642, pp. 364-367).

The present painting can be compared to other examples of Roman still-life painting of the first half of the seventeenth century in the Caravaggist tradition, among them works by Agostino Verrocchio (circa 1586-1659), Pietro Paolo Bonzi (1576-1636) and of the so-called Hartford Master. The dense composition of this painting, arranged on multiple levels, signals an increased awareness of the compositional formats deployed by Bonzi during the third and fourth decades of the century, as expressed for example in his signed painting Natura morta con frutta e farfalle formerly in the Wetzlar of Cannero collection (see C. Volpe, in: La natura morta italiana, exhibition catalogue, Milan 1964, p. 31, plate 11b). The play of shadows over the hanging bunches of grapes reveals evident iconographic and stylistic parallels with the painting representing Grapes and melons by Bonzi formerly in the Galleria Paolo Sapori, Spoleto (see F. Zeri/G. Porzio, La natura morta in Italia, Milan 1989, vol. II, p. 676 fig. 803).

Although only one documented still-life painting by Caravaggio has survived, the Basket of fruit in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan, he must nevertheless be considered the initiator of the Italian still-life tradition at the close of the sixteenth, and the beginning of the seventeenth century. Indeed, Caravaggio frequently included flowers, fruits and musical instruments in his compositions, and his principal legacy was to focus attention on the representation of reality, thereby lending still-life painting a new dignity (see G. Bocchi, La pittura di natura morta nel Seicento e la lezione di Caravaggio, in: Caravaggio e il suo tempo, ed. by V. Sgarbi, San Secondo di Pinerolo 2015, pp. 21-27).