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Lot Essay
The name of Tommaso Salini was introduced in the scholarship of Italian still life paintings by Roberto Longhi in a groundbreaking article of 1950. From his close reading of the biographies published in 1642 by Giovanni Baglione, Longhi identified Salini, together with Pietro Paolo Bonzi and Giovanni Battista Crescenzi, as the critical figures in the development of Roman still life painting in the aftermath of Caravaggio. As a contemporary Roman witness to these events, Baglione is an invaluable source. He writes enthusiastically about Salini's paintings of 'flowers and fruits and other natural things'. In fact he remarks that his friend was 'the first to arrange and to paint flowers with their leaves in vases, with various unusual and capricious compositions'.
Whether Salini painted independent flower pieces in advance of Caravaggio remains to be seen. On the other hand, there is ample documentation to support Baglione's claims on behalf of Salini's importance. In November 1619, for example, Tommaso Salini was paid 90 scudi from Cardinal Scipione Borghese for 'twelve various paintings of flowers'. The 1627 inventory of the collection of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, who was Caravaggio's principal patron, refers to 'a picture of flowers from the land of Cavaliere Salina [sic]'. The noble Ludovisi family owned more than forty still lifes by him in 1633, mainly flowers, but also two pictures representing parrots and two of various fruits. After Salini's death in 1625, his nephew, the famous painter Mario Nuzzi, compiled an inventory of the paintings remaining in his uncle's studio. Among many figure subjects, Nuzzi counted more than twenty canvases depicting flowers and eleven fruit still lifes. To date, not one of these paintings has been identified.
The present Still life with Fruit and Game was assigned to Salini in 1983 by John T. Spike in the catalogue for the exhibition Italian Still-Life Paintings from Three Centuries. Visitors who had an opportunity to examine the Lodi picture adjacent to the Boy with a Flask, an undisputed work by Salini sent by the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, concluded that the paintings were the work of a single hand. Above all, the forceful, unsentimental realism of this still life made a strong impression as a precocious and original response to the innovative style of Caravaggio, datable no later than 1625.
Only two other still lifes were then attributed to Salini: a Still Life with Fruit, signed and dated 1621 (although these inscriptions have been challenged), with Wildenstein & Co., New York, and a Still Life with Fruit, Vegetables, and Crustaceans, in the Appleby Collection, St. Helier, Jersey. Both paintings had been published by Federico Zeri in 1976 ('Nota a Tommaso Salini'. Diario di Lavoro 2). The Appleby painting and the Thyssen Boy with a Flask each include a straw-wrapped wine flask that is almost a signature motif. As years passed, however, perhaps as many as twenty additional still lifes were found and assigned to Salini by various scholars on the basis of their similar compositions and related motifs such as flasks, wicker baskets, red-and-yellow apples, lemons and so forth. Some of the pictures in this group were alternatively attributed to Luca Forte, one of the greatest Neapolitans, whose known works had truly no connection. Clearly something was amiss. The group expanded (and continues to expand) until 1990 when Ing. Giuseppe de Vito, an astute Neapolitan collector, found and published examples that fit with other late additions to the group and yet were initialled 'S. B.' and dated 1655 -- very late indeed.
These questions and all the related paintings are carefully discussed in an excellent publication by Ulisse and Gianluca Bocchi, (op. cit., pp. 165-202). Briefly stated, twenty years of investigation into the still lifes of Tommaso Salini has yielded the discovery of the Master S. B., an undocumented but evidently prolific producer of decorative still lifes in Central Italy in the mid-seventeenth century. Somewhere during this journey, Salini -- 'a pillar of Italian still life whom historians say competed with Caravaggio' (Bocchi) -- has mysteriously disappeared. The group of still lifes attributed to Salini, such as the present work, and including others once given to Forte and now to the undocumented S. B.. is superficially similar, but qualitatively quite diverse, as the Bocchi scrupulously make clear. As a scholarly convenience until the problem is sorted out, they have proposed that these paintings should be categorised under the rubric 'pseudo-Salini', as provisional solution that has been duly observed on this occasion.
We are grateful to Dr. John Spike for the above catalogue entry.
Whether Salini painted independent flower pieces in advance of Caravaggio remains to be seen. On the other hand, there is ample documentation to support Baglione's claims on behalf of Salini's importance. In November 1619, for example, Tommaso Salini was paid 90 scudi from Cardinal Scipione Borghese for 'twelve various paintings of flowers'. The 1627 inventory of the collection of Cardinal Francesco Maria del Monte, who was Caravaggio's principal patron, refers to 'a picture of flowers from the land of Cavaliere Salina [sic]'. The noble Ludovisi family owned more than forty still lifes by him in 1633, mainly flowers, but also two pictures representing parrots and two of various fruits. After Salini's death in 1625, his nephew, the famous painter Mario Nuzzi, compiled an inventory of the paintings remaining in his uncle's studio. Among many figure subjects, Nuzzi counted more than twenty canvases depicting flowers and eleven fruit still lifes. To date, not one of these paintings has been identified.
The present Still life with Fruit and Game was assigned to Salini in 1983 by John T. Spike in the catalogue for the exhibition Italian Still-Life Paintings from Three Centuries. Visitors who had an opportunity to examine the Lodi picture adjacent to the Boy with a Flask, an undisputed work by Salini sent by the Thyssen-Bornemisza collection, concluded that the paintings were the work of a single hand. Above all, the forceful, unsentimental realism of this still life made a strong impression as a precocious and original response to the innovative style of Caravaggio, datable no later than 1625.
Only two other still lifes were then attributed to Salini: a Still Life with Fruit, signed and dated 1621 (although these inscriptions have been challenged), with Wildenstein & Co., New York, and a Still Life with Fruit, Vegetables, and Crustaceans, in the Appleby Collection, St. Helier, Jersey. Both paintings had been published by Federico Zeri in 1976 ('Nota a Tommaso Salini'. Diario di Lavoro 2). The Appleby painting and the Thyssen Boy with a Flask each include a straw-wrapped wine flask that is almost a signature motif. As years passed, however, perhaps as many as twenty additional still lifes were found and assigned to Salini by various scholars on the basis of their similar compositions and related motifs such as flasks, wicker baskets, red-and-yellow apples, lemons and so forth. Some of the pictures in this group were alternatively attributed to Luca Forte, one of the greatest Neapolitans, whose known works had truly no connection. Clearly something was amiss. The group expanded (and continues to expand) until 1990 when Ing. Giuseppe de Vito, an astute Neapolitan collector, found and published examples that fit with other late additions to the group and yet were initialled 'S. B.' and dated 1655 -- very late indeed.
These questions and all the related paintings are carefully discussed in an excellent publication by Ulisse and Gianluca Bocchi, (op. cit., pp. 165-202). Briefly stated, twenty years of investigation into the still lifes of Tommaso Salini has yielded the discovery of the Master S. B., an undocumented but evidently prolific producer of decorative still lifes in Central Italy in the mid-seventeenth century. Somewhere during this journey, Salini -- 'a pillar of Italian still life whom historians say competed with Caravaggio' (Bocchi) -- has mysteriously disappeared. The group of still lifes attributed to Salini, such as the present work, and including others once given to Forte and now to the undocumented S. B.. is superficially similar, but qualitatively quite diverse, as the Bocchi scrupulously make clear. As a scholarly convenience until the problem is sorted out, they have proposed that these paintings should be categorised under the rubric 'pseudo-Salini', as provisional solution that has been duly observed on this occasion.
We are grateful to Dr. John Spike for the above catalogue entry.