A chicken, sausages and other cuts of meat hanging from hooks, with a cardoon and other vegetables on a stone ledge below

Alejandro de Loarte, who lived and worked in Madrid before establishing himself in Toledo, was one of the most significant still life painters in the early years of the genre’s development in Spain. The still life tradition had emerged in the Netherlands and Northern Italy during the last half of the sixteenth century, and by around 1600 its popularity had spread to Spain, gaining prominence through the work of artists like Juan Sánchez Cotán, whose work, including his Still Life with Game, Vegetables and Fruit in the Museo Nacional del Prado (fig. 1), served as the precursor to paintings like the present work. Loarte was a versatile painter as the inventory drawn up eight days after his death on 12 December 1626 clearly demonstrates. The paintings in his studio were itemised and nearly half of those listed were religious works, eight were portraits and fifteen were landscapes. In fact, of the 149 paintings recorded, only thirty-nine were listed as still lifes: ‘lienzos de frutas’. Of these, it is likely some would have been bodegón paintings, showing everyday ‘pantry’ items arranged simply on a stone ledge or in a niche, of which the present work is a superb example. Loarte’s still lifes, the genre in which he truly excelled as a painter, all date from the last four years of his life and mark the apogee of his career. They were evidently highly popular during his lifetime and his will makes claim to a payment for fifteen further still life pictures, twelve of which had already been delivered to his clients. Works by Alejandro de Loarte, particularly of the present quality, appear very infrequently on the market, partly owing to the limited period he spent working in the genre. Indeed, a work fully attributed to the artist has not been offered for sale at auction in more than thirty years.

The present composition is symmetrically arranged with a chicken, sausages and cuts of meat hanging from strings hooked onto a thin wooden bar above two heads of salad greens and a large cardoon arranged along a stone shelf below. This ledge motif, which is closed off at the top by the board from which the meat hangs, recalls the work of Loarte’s esteemed contemporary Juan Sánchez Cotán, who remained a formative influence on the Spanish still life genre throughout the seventeenth century. Loarte’s technique, however, shows a more direct, fluid and vigorous approach than that of his earlier contemporary. The restricted colour palette of Loarte’s painting, consisting predominantly of subtle shades of brown, white and grey, heightens the dramatic impact of the work with the dark background bringing each of the hanging elements sharply into focus. The lower foreground of the painting is dominated by the cardoon, a vegetable related to the artichoke, which appears with regularity in early Spanish still life paintings. Either side of it lie two heads of salad leaves casting strong shadows over the edge of the shelf on which they have been placed. Loarte’s technique of using broad brush-strokes to indicate light, shade and texture is particularly appreciable in areas like the tail feathers of the hanging chicken, the slight shine on the sausage skins and the carefully articulated stalks of the cardoon.

Painted at the height of the artist’s powers in 1625, this painting shows Loarte’s full mastery in composing and painting still lifes, as well as his key role in advancing and promoting the genre in Spain.