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Lot Essay
The modern rediscovery of Giacomo Ceruti coincides with the milestone exhibition, I Pittori della Realtà in Lombardia, organised in Milan in 1953. The Lombard realist show followed the great Caravaggio retrospective, also held in Milan and curated by Roberto Longhi, by only two years. The scholarly search for Caravaggio's origins and influence in his native region yielded many fruits, among them the realisation that the tradition of Lombard naturalism culminated in the eighteenth century with Ceruti.
Born in Milan in 1698, Giacomo Ceruti trained as a specialist in portraiture, a genre that had become enormously popular. During his career, Ceruti moved restlessly between the cities of Lombardy and the Veneto. In Brescia, Gandino, Venice, Padua, Piacenza and Milan, he painted portraits of remarkable intensity. At the same time he developed a theme that seemed unusual to his contemporaries but is in fact the basis of his modern reputation, no doubt through his connection to Caravaggio. When not working on a commission, Ceruti began to render the daily life of the poor in paintings that are objective and yet touching in a way that anticipates Goya later in the century. 'These are works of genuine realism, observed neither with sympathy nor disgust', was the comment of Ellis Waterhouse in 1962. Ceruti was given a nickname, 'Il Pitochetto', on account of these remarkable portrayals of beggars and vagabonds (pitocchi).
The present painting is one of only six known still lifes by Ceruti. As the artist's sole still life of documented provenance and secure date, it is moreover the key work for the reconstruction of his contribution to this genre. Its provenance is unusually distinguished. For at least a year, between 1735 and 1736, Ceruti was actively employed, first in Verona, then in Venice, by Field Marshal Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661-1747). A major patron of Giambattista Piazzetta and Gian Antonio Guardi, Marshal Schulenburg sent several paintings by Ceruti, including two Frutti e Pesci, to his palaces in Germany. A posthumous inventory, circa 1774, of the count's legacy to his German heirs lists eleven original paintings by Ceruti: four of mendicants, three landscapes with animals and four described as 'small pictures representing animals, including chickens, doves, ducks, fish and fruit'. The four still lifes were inventoried as numbers 371 to 374. The transcripts are published in two indispensable books: Mina Gregori, Giacomo Ceruti, Milan, 1982, and Alice Binion, La Galeria Scomparsa del Maresciallo von der Schulenburg, Un Mecenate nella Venezia del Settecento, Milan, 1990. Despite dispersions through the years, a great part of the Schulenburg collection remained intact and it was not until 1982 that the present still life left the possession of his heirs. The canvas is inscribed at lower right with two numbers, 371 and 69, the first of which corresponds to the 1774 inventory cited above. Acquired at once by the Lodi collection, the painting was rushed to New York in time for the February 1983 opening of the exhibition, Italian Still Life Painting from Three Centuries, although the catalogue had already been printed.
Ceruti painted for Marshal Schulenburg a marine still life with resonant colours and flowing brushwork designed to appeal to a Venetian taste. He took pains as well to give his patron something better than a routine morning catch. Laid out on a rocky ledge, the lobster, oysters, fish and vegetable are not the contents of a fisherman's net, as one might expect, but the carefully selected ingredients of a delectable zuppa di pesce or fish soup. The turnips, onions and wine vinegar are the characteristic savouries of the broth soon to be simmered in the terracotta pot. That Ceruti had his recipe from a Venetian cook is evident from the inclusion of the upper Adriatic species of red mullet and sole, known in local dialect as barbone and soasa. Their fresh flavours mingled with lobster, oysters and lemon juice (a luxury in eighteenth-century Venice), will ensure a soup fit for a king, as well as a Count.
We are grateful to Dr. John Spike for the above catalogue entry.
Born in Milan in 1698, Giacomo Ceruti trained as a specialist in portraiture, a genre that had become enormously popular. During his career, Ceruti moved restlessly between the cities of Lombardy and the Veneto. In Brescia, Gandino, Venice, Padua, Piacenza and Milan, he painted portraits of remarkable intensity. At the same time he developed a theme that seemed unusual to his contemporaries but is in fact the basis of his modern reputation, no doubt through his connection to Caravaggio. When not working on a commission, Ceruti began to render the daily life of the poor in paintings that are objective and yet touching in a way that anticipates Goya later in the century. 'These are works of genuine realism, observed neither with sympathy nor disgust', was the comment of Ellis Waterhouse in 1962. Ceruti was given a nickname, 'Il Pitochetto', on account of these remarkable portrayals of beggars and vagabonds (pitocchi).
The present painting is one of only six known still lifes by Ceruti. As the artist's sole still life of documented provenance and secure date, it is moreover the key work for the reconstruction of his contribution to this genre. Its provenance is unusually distinguished. For at least a year, between 1735 and 1736, Ceruti was actively employed, first in Verona, then in Venice, by Field Marshal Count Johann Matthias von der Schulenburg (1661-1747). A major patron of Giambattista Piazzetta and Gian Antonio Guardi, Marshal Schulenburg sent several paintings by Ceruti, including two Frutti e Pesci, to his palaces in Germany. A posthumous inventory, circa 1774, of the count's legacy to his German heirs lists eleven original paintings by Ceruti: four of mendicants, three landscapes with animals and four described as 'small pictures representing animals, including chickens, doves, ducks, fish and fruit'. The four still lifes were inventoried as numbers 371 to 374. The transcripts are published in two indispensable books: Mina Gregori, Giacomo Ceruti, Milan, 1982, and Alice Binion, La Galeria Scomparsa del Maresciallo von der Schulenburg, Un Mecenate nella Venezia del Settecento, Milan, 1990. Despite dispersions through the years, a great part of the Schulenburg collection remained intact and it was not until 1982 that the present still life left the possession of his heirs. The canvas is inscribed at lower right with two numbers, 371 and 69, the first of which corresponds to the 1774 inventory cited above. Acquired at once by the Lodi collection, the painting was rushed to New York in time for the February 1983 opening of the exhibition, Italian Still Life Painting from Three Centuries, although the catalogue had already been printed.
Ceruti painted for Marshal Schulenburg a marine still life with resonant colours and flowing brushwork designed to appeal to a Venetian taste. He took pains as well to give his patron something better than a routine morning catch. Laid out on a rocky ledge, the lobster, oysters, fish and vegetable are not the contents of a fisherman's net, as one might expect, but the carefully selected ingredients of a delectable zuppa di pesce or fish soup. The turnips, onions and wine vinegar are the characteristic savouries of the broth soon to be simmered in the terracotta pot. That Ceruti had his recipe from a Venetian cook is evident from the inclusion of the upper Adriatic species of red mullet and sole, known in local dialect as barbone and soasa. Their fresh flavours mingled with lobster, oysters and lemon juice (a luxury in eighteenth-century Venice), will ensure a soup fit for a king, as well as a Count.
We are grateful to Dr. John Spike for the above catalogue entry.