An exhibition exploring the
evolution of Caravaggio's still life painting opened at Rome's
Borghese Gallery on Wednesday.
'The Origin of the still life in Italy - Caravaggio and the
Master of Hartford' includes such masterpieces as the 'Basket of
Fruit', on special loan from the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan,
and the 'Young sick Bacchus' and the 'Boy with a basket of
fruit' from the Borghese Gallery collection itself.
In total approximately 40 artworks are on display until
February 19, including works by the so-called Master of
Hartford, a mysterious young painter believed by some art
historians, including Federico Zeri, to have been Caravaggio
himself.
The exhibition begins by looking at the tradition of
naturalism in Caravaggio's native Lombardy, represented by
Vincenzo Campi, Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Giovanni Antonio Figino,
credited with painting the first ever still life in Italy,
'Metal Plate with Peaches and Vine Leaves' (1590-1594).
The exhibition curators have juxtaposed Caravaggio's the
'Young Sick Bacchus' and the 'Boy with a Basket of Fruit' and
the four paintings unearthed by Zeri from the Scipione Borghese
collection in the 1970s and attributed to the 'Hartford master'
in order to play up the contrast between the two styles: "drier
and more wooden" for the unknown painter and full of the poetry
of naturalism for Caravaggio.
The Hartford master was the first painter to devote himself
entirely to still life, while Caravaggio uses the genre to bring
about his very personal painting revolution.
The 'Basket of Fruit' has an "extraordinary monumentality
the same dignity as a figure", Borghese Gallery director Anna
Coliva said.
Here for Caravaggio still life was "not an accident" but an
act of "artistic will", and indeed the painter said that for him
painting a figure or a piece of fruit amounted to the same
thing.
Already therefore art "doesn't just reproduce reality but is
a kind of parallel world," Coliva continued.
The exhibition continues by exploring the work of numerous
masters who followed in Caravaggio's footsteps and devoted part
of their output to still life.
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