Sweets on a tazza, narcissi in a glass vase, breadsticks in a jar, and apples, jelly and a lemon on a draped table oil on canvas 24 3/4 x 29 7/8 in. (63 x 76 cm.)
Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen Alte Pinakothek, Natura Morta Italiana, 27 November 1984-22 February 1985, no. 59; Berlin, Gemäldegalerie Staatliche Museen-Preussicher Kulturbesitz, 6 September-27 October 1985. Saitama, The Museum of Modern Art, Italian still life from three centuries, 8 August-21 September 1986, no. 53; Darumaya, The Yomiuri Shimbun Museum of Art, 31 October-5 November 1986; and Shimoseki, City Art Museum, 6 January-1 February 1987. Jerusalem, The Israel Museum of Art, Italian still life painting, from the Silvano Lodi collection, June 1994, no. 56. Tokyo, Seiji Togo Memorial Musuem of Art, Italian still life painting, from the Silvano Lodi collection, 28 April-26 May 2001, no. 17; and on tour in Japan. Brussels, Crédit Communal de Bruxelles, L'Art Gourmand, November 1996-February 1997, pp. 168-9; Darmstadt, Hessisches Landesmuseum, 5 March-1 June 1997; and Cologne Wallraf-Richartz-Museum, 19 June-14 September 1997. Ravensburg, Schloss Achberg, Natura Morta Italiana: Italienische stilleben aus vier Jarhunderten, sammlung Silvano Lodi, 11 April-12 October 2003.
Literature
L. Salerno, La natura morta italiana: tre secoli di natura morta italiana: la raccolta Silvano Lodi, exhibition catalogue, Florence, 1984, p. 131, no. 59, as Emilian Master, 17th Century. Italian still life painting from three centuries, the Silvano Lodi collection, exhibition catalogue, Jerusalem, 1994, no. 56. P. Beusen, et. al., L'art gourmand, exhibition catalogue, Ghent, 1996, pp. 168-9. B. Ghelfi, Il libro dei conti del Guercino, 1629-1666, Venice, 1997. Italian still life painting, from the Silvano Lodi collection, exhibition catalogue, Tokyo, 2001, p. 56, no. 17. S. Dathe, Natura morte italian: Italienisches stilleben aus vier Jahrhunderten, Sammlung Silvano Lodi, exhibition catalogue, Ravensburg, 2003, no. 53.
Provenance
Possibly commissioned by Baldassari Torresani, Prior of San Giuseppe, Bologna, 1635 (see infra).
Notes
Paolo Antonio Barbieri worked alongside his brother, the famous Guercino, keeping their joint accounts and pursuing his own speciality of still lifes. C.C. Malvasia, the seventeenth-century biographer of Bolognese painters, considered Paolo Antonio's pictures 'without equal', noting that he had inherited Guercino's 'chiaroscuro, brushwork and vivid coluors' (Felsina pittrice, ed. 1841, II, 276, 301). Scrupulous and thorough, Paolo Antonio was charged with the management of his brother's atelier, leaving him comparatively little time - Malvasia notes - to work on his own paintings.
In 1629 Paolo Antonio began to record the studio's receipts in an account book, which still exists, known as the Libro dei Conti (B. Ghelfi, Il Libro de Conti del Guercino 1629-1666, 1997). The references to his own works, all still lifes, can be taken as definitive. Fewer than forty paintings, all still lifes, are listed for the twenty year period, 1629 to 1649. They include twelve still life of fruit, eight with animals, five flowerpieces, seven depicting various fish, one of sea shells, two of hens, game birds, and spezieria (spice goods), and one each of confetture (sweets) and silver objects. According to an entry of 16 November 1655, in Guercino's hand, Paolo Antonio began a picture of an ortolano, a woman selling fruit, that Guercino finished and sold five years after his brother's death. As these pictures were made for widely scattered collections, and frequently changing hands, their whereabouts were largely unknown to Malvasia already in 1678. In 1961, Francesco Arcangeli convincingly identified the entry for a spezeria executed in 1637 with Paolo Antonio's painting of this subject in the Pinacoteca Civica of Spoleto. ('Il fratello del Guercino,' in Arte Antica e Moderna, 13/16, 1961, p. 327, pl. 150a). The Ortolano has recently come to light in a private collection in Vignola (see D. Benati in La natura morta in Emilia e in Romagna, 2000, fig. 40).
The present picture has exceptional importance as the third known still life that can be securely identified with an entry in the Libro dei Conti of Paolo Antonio Barbieri. The relevant entry runs as follows: '6 May 1635. Received from the Prior of San Giuseppe in Bologna, 25 ducats for the picture of Confections, made by me. Which sum is equal to: 34 scudos 1.10 lire.' (Il di 6. Maggio (1635) Dal Padre Priore di San Gioseppe di Bologna si è ricevuto ducat.ni 25. per il Quadro di Confeture [sic], da me fattoli 34 L 1.10). Confetture is the Italian word for candies and other sweet confections. The prior for whom this delightful picture was made is identified on other pages in the Libro dei Conti as Baldassare Torresani, a priest of the convent of San Giuseppe in Bologna. Torresani was a remarkably active client of the Barbieri brothers in the early 1630s. The Quadro di Confetture was in fact the sixth still life received from Paolo Antonio since 1632. Meanwhile Guercino satisfied the prior with at least five paintings. Since Baldassare Torresani is not recorded as a collector, it seems likely that he distributed them to others, especially because, apart from a head of St. Peter, the subjects ordered from Guercino were all secular: Bacchus, Mars, Ceres, and the philosophers Democritus and Heraclites.
A letter of 3 May 1635, in which Paolo Antonio describes the Confetture to Torresani, has survived by chance on the back of a drawing by Guercino in the Royal Collection at Windsor Castle (D. Mahon and N. Turner, The Drawings of Guercino at Windsor Castle, 1989, cat. no. 327). Dated three days earlier than the payment record in the Libro dei Conti, the letter appears to be a draft text of a letter intended to accompany the picture in its transport from Cento to Bologna. Numerous crossings-out obscure many of the words, but clearly legible is the crucial information that Barbieri had 'never before' painted a Confettione. His other comments refer to the care devoted to this picture, mentioning that some of the sweets were displayed in containers, others on the table top.
Paintings of sweets, jellies and other confectioner's delights were common place in Spanish still lifes through the numerous examples of Juan van der Hamen, beginning around 1621. The present painting is the earliest known treatment of this subject in Italy, which conforms with Barbieri's remark in this regard to his patron that he had never before painted one. The arrangement of the elements and the low, direct point of view are reminiscent of contemporary Caravaggesque still lifes. It is generally believed that Guercino's sojourn in Rome, 1621-23, in some way influenced his decision to train Paolo Antonio, his junior by twelve years, as a specialist in this new genre.
The painter has admirably resolved the problem of lending pictorial weight to items that are by their very nature frivolous and meant to be consumed in a minute. A corner of a draped table is filled with good things to eat. Curled sugar sticks and a few nuts are heaped on a raised compote with a sculpted stem. Apples and circular wooden boxes are heaped all around it. One of the boxes has been opened and stands on its lid so as to display its sweet fruit jelly. Its glistening red surface is a focal point in the composition. Towering over the assorted confections are three crisp biscuits in an upright glass jar, which reflects the white sugar twists on one side, and, on the other side, the bouquet of flowers.
The documentation of 1634 makes this Still Life the artist's earliest known work and casts important light on his development. In it, Paolo Antonio employs a robust handling and incisive contrasts of red, white and tan that are typical of Guercino's palette at this time. Three years later, in the Spoleto Spezieria, Paolo Antonio will elect to display the elements in a comparatively static arrangement, no doubt in response to Guercino's evolution towards classicism during this decade.
The fame of this Confetture in Bologna was such that P.F. Cittadini openly copied from it on at least three occasions (La natura morta in Emilia e in Romagna, 2000, figs. 11, 29, 45). The jelly box standing upright on its own lid is replicated in reverse in Cittadini's still life of Sweetmeats in the Pinacoteca Civica of Cento and in his famous Bouquet of Flowers in Santa Maria di Galliera, Bologna. The biscuits in the tall glass jar figure prominently in one of Cittadini's famous series of four still lifes for the ducal palace of Sassuolo. These pictures, now in the Galleria Estense, Modena, were ascribed in a nineteenth-century inventory to Paolo Antonio Barbieri.
We are grateful to Dr John Spike for the above catalogue entry.
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