A Pair of Still Lifes
Provenance
Private Collection, Genoa
Catalina E.J. de Segal, Buenos Aires
Paul Mellon, Virginia, by 1984; sold at
Christie’s, New York, Still Life Paintings from the Collection of Paul Mellon,18 January 1984, lot 10
Private Collection
Exhibitions
Buenos Aires, Museo Nacional de Bellas Artes, De El Greco a Tiepolo, 1964
Munich, Kunsthalle der Hypo-Kulturstif tung, Stille Welt. Italienische Stilleben: Arcimboldo, Caravaggio, Strozzi, 6 December 2002–23 February 2003, travelled to Florence, Palazzo Strozzi, La Natura Morta Italiana. Da Caravaggio al Settecento, 26 June–12 October 2003
Bibliography
Robert Longhi, ‘Un momento importante nella storia della natura morta’, Paragone, Florence, 1950, vol. 1, no. 1, reproduced pls. 13, 14.
Giovanni Testori, ‘Natura morte di Tomasso Salini’, Paragone, Florence, 1954, vol. 5, no. 51, pp. 20–26.
Luigi Salerno, ‘Precisazioni du Giovanni Lanfranco e su Tommaso Salini’, Commentari, Rome, 1954, vol. 5, no. 3, p. 254.
Juan Corradini, Cuadros Gajo la lupa, Buenos Aires, 1956, fig. 56.
Charles Sterling, La Nature Morte de l’antiquite a nos jours, Paris, 1959, p. 135, note 114.
Giuseppe Delogu, Natura Morta Italiana, Bergamo, 1962, p. 187.
Mina Gregori, La Natura Morta Italiana, Naples, 1964, exh. cat., p. 88.
Evelina Borea, ‘Osservazioni sulla natura morta italiana del seicento alla Mostra di Napoli’, Bolletino d’Arte, Rome, 1964, vol. 44, no 4. pp. 349–50.
Ferdinando Bologna, Natura in Posa, Bergamo, 1971, exh. cat., under no. 50.
Mina Gregori, ‘Notizie su Agostino Verrochi e un’ipotesi per Giovanni Battista Crescenzi’, Paragone, Florence, 1973, p. 50.
Theodore Crombie, ‘Highlights from Helicon’, Apollo Magazine, London, 1974, vol. XCIX, no. 150, p. 156.
Mina Gregori, La Natura Morta Italiana tra Cinquecento e Settecento, Florence, 2003, exh. cat., pp. 308–09.
Essay
Although best known as a painter of sacred and secular figural subjects, Bernardo Strozzi included still life elements in his paintings throughout his career. The Cook of around 1625 in the Galleria di Palazzo Rosso in Genoa (fig. 1), Joseph Telling his Dreams of 1626 in the Pallavicini Collection in Genoa, and the Allegory of Spring and Autumn from the 1630s now in the National Gallery of Ireland in Dublin are a few examples, while in the Fruit Vendor in a private collection in New York and the Gardener, also in a private collection, fruits, flowers, and other still life elements dominate canvases populated by single female figures. Despite Strozzi’s evident fluency in rendering still life elements, his activity as a wholly independent still life painter is not well understood. Indeed, the attribution of the present pair of works has fluctuated between various artists from their initial publication in 1950, although Mina Gregori’s arguments in favor of Strozzi’s authorship have proved tenacious. One certainty is that Strozzi’s development as a still life painter was influenced by two painters from Lucca, Simone del Tintore, to whom the present works were once attributed, and Paolo Paolini, whom Strozzi likely encountered during his supposed trip to Rome in 1625. In both of the present still lifes, fruits and flowers are arranged on plain stone ledges, situated roughly on a similar pictorial plane. Both works feature delicate glass vases, which appear in other still lifes by Strozzi, while the basket in one canvas ultimately derives from Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan (151; fig. 2). Strozzi’s characteristic brushwork, applied in thick layers to evoke different textures, as well as more delicate touches of impasto used to create the impression of light glancing off some of the fruits as well as the glass vases, imbues these relatively understated compositions with a great degree of visual interest.
At least one writer in the mid-1620s noted the burgeoning popularity of still life and landscape painting in Strozzi’s native Genoa. It seems reasonable to speculate that Strozzi, already a gifted painter of still life elements, and having probably seen still life paintings in Rome, would have seized the opportunity to produce his own independent still life paintings in response to this fresh new taste in the local market. While Strozzi enjoyed the patronage of some of Genoa’s wealthiest and most prominent families, painting still lifes, which were likely sold on the open market as such works were in Rome, may have offered the artist a supplemental income, essential to supporting his family. This strategy must have proved successful, for Strozzi continued to paint such works following his move to Venice around 1632/33. Inventories of his belongings taken after his death in 1644 demonstrate that he not only produced still life paintings himself during the latter part of his life, but also employed a number of artists both as collaborators and copyists specifically for the production and replication of works in that genre.❖
Virginia Brilliant