Il Pensionante del Saraceni

The artist’s interest in scenes of everyday life, and still life in particular, closely follows that of Caravaggio while his serene subjects, dusky palette and pearlescent light departs from the brutal provocations and extreme tonal contrasts of the Lombard master. No less an authority than Pierre Rosenberg described ‘the charming originality of the Pensionante’s mysterious personality, [which] resides in his smoothly executed paintings, with their soft lighting, delicate and tranquil poetry, and melancholic reserve’.

The name Pensionante del Saraceni was first coined by Roberto Longhi in 1943, when the scholar attributed a group of four Caravaggesque paintings close in style to the Lombard master. Yet Longhi designated the artist as a ‘boarder’, rather than ‘student’ or ‘follower’, in order to recognize his independence from the Venetian Carlo Saraceni (1579–1620). Indeed, Longhi considered the Pensionante to be in some ways more successful in interpreting Caravaggio’s lesson than his namesake, who never painted still lifes. Longhi deemed the Pensionante to be French, foremost because Saraceni was a well-known Francophile, for at least one French artist lived in his house, and because the Pensionante painted with a ‘vague French intonation.’ Owing to the symmetrical forms of his figures, the atmospheric quality and the peaceful narratives of the works assigned to him, most scholars have agreed with Longhi’s conclusion that the Pensionante was indeed French. Various attempts to identify him with Jean Le Clerc (1585–1633), Guy François (before 1580–1650), Georges de La Tour (1593–1652), François Walschartz (1597/8–1678/9), as well as the Flemish painter Jacob van Oost the Elder (1603–1671), all of whom are recorded as having worked closely with Saraceni in the decade following Caravaggio’s death in 1610, have come to naught.