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Lot Essay
This magisterial still life is among the finest of a group of around ten still lifes by an anonymous painter whose namesake derives from a painting in the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art (fig. 1). Active in Rome in the final decade of the sixteenth and first decade of the seventeenth centuries, what scant documentary evidence there is suggests the painter likely worked alongside Caravaggio in the studio of Giuseppe Cesari, Cavaliere d’Arpino. Indeed, this may explain why two paintings by him, today in the Galleria Borghese, Rome, are included on a list dated 4 May 1607 of works confiscated from Cavaliere d’Arpino’s collection by order of Pope Paul V. Since their initial publication by Federico Zeri in 1976, these two paintings have generally been regarded as early works by this anonymous artist (see, for example, J.T. Spike, op. cit., no. 8, p. 41).
The confiscation of works from Arpino’s ‘sontuossimo studio’ (‘most sumptuous studio’), on the basis flimsy of charges, was in fact most likely a ruse as the paintings were soon gifted to the pope’s nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, allowing to him to enrich his personal collection with works by some of the most celebrated artists of the period at no cost to himself (Dotti, op. cit, p. 123). The list included such celebrated paintings as Caravaggio’s Bacchino Malato and Boy with a basket of fruit (both still in the Galleria Borghese, Rome). Had the individual responsible for compiling the inventory of seized paintings taken a moment to include the names of their authors, the identity of the Master of the Hartford Still Life would not be lost to us today.
Within a few short years of executing the Borghese paintings, the Master of the Hartford Still Life would come to establish himself as one of the most sophisticated proponents of Caravaggesque still life painting in Rome. His works distinguish themselves from other Caravaggesque still life paintings of the period through their novel and sophisticated approach to light. As Alberto Cottino has observed in La natura morta in Italia (1989; loc. cit.), the Master of the Hartford Still Life used light to bind objects together and define them with extraordinary optical clarity. Similarly, John T. Spike has stressed how ‘the shadows serve to underscore the plastic, volumetric qualities of the objects without disturbing the integrity of their outlines’ (op. cit., p. 44).
Though a precise chronology of his artistic development is difficult to ascertain, Zeri proposed a rough outline of the master’s chronology (loc. cit.). According to Zeri, the artist’s earliest paintings — including the present example — would seem to be those that exhibit a more free-flowing compositional arrangement, while late paintings, including the namesake canvas in Hartford, are characterized by a rigorous perspectival relationship between the various objects. More recently, Cottino proposed a revised dating of the pictures in his contributions to the exhibition La natura morta italiana (2002-03). There, he suggested the Hartford painting is contemporaneous with the work here under discussion, noting their more structured compositions and more firmly rendered still life elements when compared with works he places later in the artist’s career (loc. cit.). The artist’s early preference for positioning the most prominent motifs along either side of the composition with multiple foci in the middle, as evident here, is a feature of Roman still life painting in the period.
The present painting finds its closest parallels with the example that brought a world-record price when it sold Christie’s, Iberica, 25 May 1999, lot 788 (fig. 2). Both paintings exhibit a predominantly horizontal composition in which the objects – including a carafe of similar shape, something of a hallmark for the artist – and fruit are distributed across a table draped with a white linen and finely woven carpet in an archaizing fashion of small, homogenous groups largely detached from one another. The anonymous still life painter may well have modelled his arrangements on Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus of circa 1601-02 (The National Gallery, London), which depicts a similarly draped table (fig. 3). While in the present painting the artist more-or-less arranged the still life elements paratactically in two parallel rows, they exhibit a greater freedom of disposition in the other work, which led Cottino to propose a date of circa 1605-10 for that painting (loc. cit.).
A NOTE ABOUT THE ARTIST
Despite various suggestions, the artist’s precise identity remains the source of significant debate. Charles Sterling was the first to recognize the Caravaggesque qualities of the namesake painting in Hartford, which had previously been attributed to the Milanese painter Fede Galizia, though he erroneously believed it to be a copy after Caravaggio (C. Sterling, La Nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1952, p. 88, no. 66). All subsequent commentators have either placed the Master of the Hartford Still Life in the orbit of Caravaggio (Raffaello Causa, Mina Gregori, Marco Rosci, John T. Spike, Francesco Porzio and Davide Dotti) or suggested he was synonymous with the young Caravaggio himself.
The controversial association between the Master of the Hartford Still Life and Caravaggio was first proposed by Zeri, who believed the works grouped under this appellation reflected Caravaggio’s approach to still life painting while in the studio of Cavaliere d’Arpino around 1593 (op. cit.). Indeed, Caravaggio’s early biographer Giovanni Pietro Bellori noted that, in his youth, Caravaggio ‘applied himself to paint flowers and fruit’ (‘fu applicato a dipinger fiori, e fruti’) while under the tutelage of the elder artist (G.P. Bellori, Le Vite de’ pittori, scultori, et architetti moderni, Rome, 1672). Zeri’s suggestion was taken up a few years later by Claudio Strinati in an exhibition staged in 1979 in Rome (C. Strinati, Quadri Romani tra ‘500 e ‘600 opere restaurate e da restaurare, exhibition catalogue, Rome, 1979) and was given further credence by Charles Sterling, who, in 1981, noted that ‘this identification is to be considered very seriously, and its historical implications are far reaching’ (C. Sterling, Still Life Painting from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, New York, 1981, p. 17).
In addition to Caravaggio himself, scholars have attempted to identify the Master of the Hartford Still Life as one or another of his Roman contemporaries, including Bernardino Cesari (brother of Cavaliere d’Arpino), Giovanni Battista Crescenzi and Prospero Orsi. His identification as Orsi was recently advanced by, among others, Strinati, Mina Gregori and Clovis Whitfield, the basis of which being similarities in approach between a Lute player and paintings given to the Master of the Hartford Still Life on the one hand and Orsi’s frescoes in the Scala Sancta, Rome, on the other (E. Clark and C. Whitfield, eds., op. cit., pp. 72-73). However, it must be stated that the Lute player has variously been attributed to a French Caravaggesque painter (Benedict Nicolson), the Master of the Hartford Still Life (Mina Gregori) and Pietro Paolini (Maurizio Marini), while the program of the Scala Sancta was the result of a collaboration by some twenty painters with little certitude as to who was responsible for each fresco.
That modern students of early Seicento Italian still life painting have been so perplexed by the identity of the Master of the Hartford Still Life should perhaps come as no surprise. Indeed, contemporaries appear to have been less preoccupied with such concerns than the modern viewer: even Caravaggio had to remind his most important early patron, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte (1549-1627), that a Carafe of flowers in the Cardinal’s collection was by the master himself and not another hand.
The confiscation of works from Arpino’s ‘sontuossimo studio’ (‘most sumptuous studio’), on the basis flimsy of charges, was in fact most likely a ruse as the paintings were soon gifted to the pope’s nephew, Cardinal Scipione Borghese, allowing to him to enrich his personal collection with works by some of the most celebrated artists of the period at no cost to himself (Dotti, op. cit, p. 123). The list included such celebrated paintings as Caravaggio’s Bacchino Malato and Boy with a basket of fruit (both still in the Galleria Borghese, Rome). Had the individual responsible for compiling the inventory of seized paintings taken a moment to include the names of their authors, the identity of the Master of the Hartford Still Life would not be lost to us today.
Within a few short years of executing the Borghese paintings, the Master of the Hartford Still Life would come to establish himself as one of the most sophisticated proponents of Caravaggesque still life painting in Rome. His works distinguish themselves from other Caravaggesque still life paintings of the period through their novel and sophisticated approach to light. As Alberto Cottino has observed in La natura morta in Italia (1989; loc. cit.), the Master of the Hartford Still Life used light to bind objects together and define them with extraordinary optical clarity. Similarly, John T. Spike has stressed how ‘the shadows serve to underscore the plastic, volumetric qualities of the objects without disturbing the integrity of their outlines’ (op. cit., p. 44).
Though a precise chronology of his artistic development is difficult to ascertain, Zeri proposed a rough outline of the master’s chronology (loc. cit.). According to Zeri, the artist’s earliest paintings — including the present example — would seem to be those that exhibit a more free-flowing compositional arrangement, while late paintings, including the namesake canvas in Hartford, are characterized by a rigorous perspectival relationship between the various objects. More recently, Cottino proposed a revised dating of the pictures in his contributions to the exhibition La natura morta italiana (2002-03). There, he suggested the Hartford painting is contemporaneous with the work here under discussion, noting their more structured compositions and more firmly rendered still life elements when compared with works he places later in the artist’s career (loc. cit.). The artist’s early preference for positioning the most prominent motifs along either side of the composition with multiple foci in the middle, as evident here, is a feature of Roman still life painting in the period.
The present painting finds its closest parallels with the example that brought a world-record price when it sold Christie’s, Iberica, 25 May 1999, lot 788 (fig. 2). Both paintings exhibit a predominantly horizontal composition in which the objects – including a carafe of similar shape, something of a hallmark for the artist – and fruit are distributed across a table draped with a white linen and finely woven carpet in an archaizing fashion of small, homogenous groups largely detached from one another. The anonymous still life painter may well have modelled his arrangements on Caravaggio’s Supper at Emmaus of circa 1601-02 (The National Gallery, London), which depicts a similarly draped table (fig. 3). While in the present painting the artist more-or-less arranged the still life elements paratactically in two parallel rows, they exhibit a greater freedom of disposition in the other work, which led Cottino to propose a date of circa 1605-10 for that painting (loc. cit.).
A NOTE ABOUT THE ARTIST
Despite various suggestions, the artist’s precise identity remains the source of significant debate. Charles Sterling was the first to recognize the Caravaggesque qualities of the namesake painting in Hartford, which had previously been attributed to the Milanese painter Fede Galizia, though he erroneously believed it to be a copy after Caravaggio (C. Sterling, La Nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1952, p. 88, no. 66). All subsequent commentators have either placed the Master of the Hartford Still Life in the orbit of Caravaggio (Raffaello Causa, Mina Gregori, Marco Rosci, John T. Spike, Francesco Porzio and Davide Dotti) or suggested he was synonymous with the young Caravaggio himself.
The controversial association between the Master of the Hartford Still Life and Caravaggio was first proposed by Zeri, who believed the works grouped under this appellation reflected Caravaggio’s approach to still life painting while in the studio of Cavaliere d’Arpino around 1593 (op. cit.). Indeed, Caravaggio’s early biographer Giovanni Pietro Bellori noted that, in his youth, Caravaggio ‘applied himself to paint flowers and fruit’ (‘fu applicato a dipinger fiori, e fruti’) while under the tutelage of the elder artist (G.P. Bellori, Le Vite de’ pittori, scultori, et architetti moderni, Rome, 1672). Zeri’s suggestion was taken up a few years later by Claudio Strinati in an exhibition staged in 1979 in Rome (C. Strinati, Quadri Romani tra ‘500 e ‘600 opere restaurate e da restaurare, exhibition catalogue, Rome, 1979) and was given further credence by Charles Sterling, who, in 1981, noted that ‘this identification is to be considered very seriously, and its historical implications are far reaching’ (C. Sterling, Still Life Painting from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century, New York, 1981, p. 17).
In addition to Caravaggio himself, scholars have attempted to identify the Master of the Hartford Still Life as one or another of his Roman contemporaries, including Bernardino Cesari (brother of Cavaliere d’Arpino), Giovanni Battista Crescenzi and Prospero Orsi. His identification as Orsi was recently advanced by, among others, Strinati, Mina Gregori and Clovis Whitfield, the basis of which being similarities in approach between a Lute player and paintings given to the Master of the Hartford Still Life on the one hand and Orsi’s frescoes in the Scala Sancta, Rome, on the other (E. Clark and C. Whitfield, eds., op. cit., pp. 72-73). However, it must be stated that the Lute player has variously been attributed to a French Caravaggesque painter (Benedict Nicolson), the Master of the Hartford Still Life (Mina Gregori) and Pietro Paolini (Maurizio Marini), while the program of the Scala Sancta was the result of a collaboration by some twenty painters with little certitude as to who was responsible for each fresco.
That modern students of early Seicento Italian still life painting have been so perplexed by the identity of the Master of the Hartford Still Life should perhaps come as no surprise. Indeed, contemporaries appear to have been less preoccupied with such concerns than the modern viewer: even Caravaggio had to remind his most important early patron, Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte (1549-1627), that a Carafe of flowers in the Cardinal’s collection was by the master himself and not another hand.