Antonio Ponce Art for Sale and Sold Prices

Painter, b. 1608 - d. 1677

Antonio Ponce was a minor Spanish painter of Baroque, floral still-life. He was apprenticed in 1624 to Juan van der Hamen y León (1596-1631). Antonio married his master’s niece, Francisca de Alfaro, in 1628. His compositional style and manner of handling pigments was strongly influenced by van der Hamen, but they lack the grace and clarity of composition of his master. Both artists used the compositional device of stepped ledges.

Antonio Ponce’s works were derivative, as they were closely based on his teacher’s paintings. Ponce remained an undistinguished Spanish painter, but his still-life floral paintings gained in grace and naturalness towards the latter part of his life (after the 1640s and 50s) when he lightened the backgrounds of his paintings and rendered the objects in them with greater freedom, updating his painterly style, perhaps under the indirect influence of Caravaggio’s paintings. His "Basket of Fruit" is in the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milano.