Cerchia di Giovanni Paolo Castelli detto Spadino (1659 – 1730) - Natura morta

Circle of Giovanni Paolo Castelli known as Spadino (Rome, 1659 – 1730)
Still life
Oil on canvas, 33. 5 x 42 cm - With frame, 46. 5 x 55. 5 cm

A fruity canvas depicting still lifes offers turgid autumnal first fruits, generously watery in their ripe fullness. Velvety peaches are combined with refined bunches of white grapes, with split figs; it is possible to see a maple leaf, thin as a veil, which covers the bunch of figs with extreme delicacy, to protect the fruits of the earth. The particular silkiness that covers the bunches of grapes, milky in the union of the grapes, allows us to bring the present artist closer to the work of Spadino, a long-appreciated Roman nature-morphist.
Archival research has made it possible to distinguish three painters from the Castelli family, specialized in the still life genre: the two brothers Bartolomeo (known as the Elder) and Giovanni Paolo (known as the Spadino) and their son, Bartolomeo the Younger, also nicknamed Spadino. In particular, it was thanks to Federico Zeri in the 1950s that the nucleus of Still Lifes in the Spada Collection in Rome began to be progressively specified, generically identified as “Spadino”, and assigning four of them to the hand of the young Bartolomeo (remember the Nature still life with grapes, apples and figs and Still life with peaches, 13 x 29. 5 cm, Spada Gallery) . The very dark variations of the elderly “Spadavecchio” were a discriminating element in distinguishing the hand of Giovanni Paolo Castelli from that of his family (Ferdinando Bologna, Nature in pose. Aspects of ancient Italian still life, 1968 and Luigi Salerno, Nuovi studi on Italian still life and Still life of fruit, 1989) . Heir to an already elaborate tradition, Giovanni Paolo reinterprets the most genuine simplicity of the portrayed fruits with a weighty sense of frankness. Opposing the double temptation of realism and inventive exuberance, Spadino dedicated himself to painting fruits, rather than flowers, animals, pottery, glass or silver, to evoke the luxury of men and the sumptuousness of nature, highlighting a symptomatic taste for the abundance and splendor combined with the sense of the precariousness of the vegetation.
Trained within the brilliant climate of Capitoline naturemorphism, Spadino never forgot the suggestions deriving from the Flemish Abraham Brueghel, who had marked the evolution of the genre in the second seventeenth century, nor from the German Christian Berentz, in Italy since 1689. analysis of the natural apparatus through sudden changes of color, veering from dark to lakes of light, as happens in the present, in fact derived from this particular ultramontane comma, established in the capital and strongly influencing its context.
It is possible to compare the present composition, due to the carefully chosen fruits and the long-limbed arrangement, concretely close together in the pieces depicted, with various works created by Spadino and today in a private collection. We can also mention his natures today in the collections of the Bardini Museum in Florence, Raccamadoro Ramelli (Fermo) , Galleria Spada (Rome) .

The frame is provided free of charge, therefore it cannot be a reason for return or complaint.

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