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Lot Essay
This richly orchestrated still life belongs to the small yet important corpus of canvases associated with the anonymous painter known as the Master the Hartford Still Life. Named after the impressive canvas in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford (inv. no. 1942.353; fig. 1), this artist is now recognized as a central figure in the genesis of Roman still-life painting at the turn of the seventeenth century. The present painting—with its blue-and-white vase of cut flowers to the left and a gilt tazza piled high with wild strawberries, peaches, and plums to the right—encapsulates the Master’s highly individual response to Caravaggesque naturalism at the very moment in which independent still lifes were emerging as a genre in Rome.
The composition is organized paratactically across the breadth of the canvas in two principal clusters, set upon a monumental stone ledge and silhouetted against a velvety dark ground. On the left, an elaborately decorated ceramic vase supports an exuberant bouquet including tulips, irises, narcissi, carnations, and daisies, each flower described sharply against the shadow. Mina Gregori has associated the vase with the contemporary Roman taste for vasi grotteschi, the playfully ornate vessels then fashionable in aristocratic collections (M. Gregori, op. cit., pp. 49-50). On the right, an elegant gilt metal tazza rises from the ledge, its shallow bowl heaped with softly blushed peaches, purple and yellow plums, and an abundance of fraises du bois. Between these two vertical accents, the stone surface is animated by a cornucopia of fruit spread in apparently casual profusion, whose skins and leaves catch the raking light, creating a subtle play of highlights and reflections across the cold stone plane. The strong lateral light falling from the left, sharply defining each object with crisp highlights while maintaining its contour, exemplifies what Alberto Cottino has described as an innovative use of light to ‘bind objects together and define them with extraordinary optical clarity’ (A. Cottino, La natura morta in Italia, Milan, 1989, vol. II, p. 691).
Scholarship surrounding the Master of Hartford is inextricably bound to the biography of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). The namesake Hartford picture was first published by Charles Sterling in 1952; while Sterling there rejected the traditional attribution to the Lombard painter Fede Galizia in the second (1959) edition of La Nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours he went on to consider the composition a reflection of a lost work by Caravaggio (C. Sterling, La Nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours, Paris, 1952, p. 87; 2nd ed., 1959, p. 54). This connection was deepened in 1976 by Federico Zeri, who proposed that the Master of Hartford was none other than the young Caravaggio himself, working in the studio of Giuseppe Cesari, Cavaliere d’Arpino (F. Zeri, ‘Sull’esecuzione di natura morte nella bottega del Cavalier d’Arpino...’, Diari di lavoro 2, Turin, 1976, pp. 92-103). Zeri drew attention to the 1607 sequestration inventory of Cavaliere d’Arpino’s collection, which listed floral and fruit pieces alongside known Caravaggio masterpieces (ibid.). The close relationship with Caravaggio has also been read in the light of Giovanni Pietro Bellori’s biographical note that the young Lombard ‘was applied to painting flowers and fruit’ (‘fu applicato a dipinger fiori, e frutti’) upon his arrival in Rome (G.P. Bellori, Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, Rome, 1672).
Mina Gregori situates the beginnings of the Hartford Master’s activity within this specific context of the d’Arpino workshop, which she presents as a crucible for experimentation in the genre (Gregori, op. cit., pp. 49–50). She notes that his still lifes mirror key ideas developed by Caravaggio: the illumination of natural objects within a confined space, the oblique band of light across a dark wall, the basket teetering on the table edge, and glass carafes of flowers with shimmering transparencies (ibid.). While scholarly opinion remains divided on the specific identity of the Master—with candidates ranging from the young Caravaggio to Francesco Zucchi or Giovanni Battista Crescenzi—there is broad agreement that the artist worked in close sympathy with Caravaggio’s naturalism.
Within the painter’s surviving oeuvre, the present canvas marks a significant development. The distinctive combination of the grotesque-decorated vase, the sumptuous metal tazza, and the almost scientific exactitude of the fruit signals the painter’s central role in shaping Roman still-life painting as a vehicle for both sensuous display and intellectual meditation on the ‘new nature’ (Gregori, op. cit.; Coliva and Dotti, op. cit.).
We are grateful to Davide Dotti for endorsing the attribution to The Master of the Hartford Still Life on the basis of digital photographs (written communication; 7 November 2025).
The composition is organized paratactically across the breadth of the canvas in two principal clusters, set upon a monumental stone ledge and silhouetted against a velvety dark ground. On the left, an elaborately decorated ceramic vase supports an exuberant bouquet including tulips, irises, narcissi, carnations, and daisies, each flower described sharply against the shadow. Mina Gregori has associated the vase with the contemporary Roman taste for vasi grotteschi, the playfully ornate vessels then fashionable in aristocratic collections (M. Gregori, op. cit., pp. 49-50). On the right, an elegant gilt metal tazza rises from the ledge, its shallow bowl heaped with softly blushed peaches, purple and yellow plums, and an abundance of fraises du bois. Between these two vertical accents, the stone surface is animated by a cornucopia of fruit spread in apparently casual profusion, whose skins and leaves catch the raking light, creating a subtle play of highlights and reflections across the cold stone plane. The strong lateral light falling from the left, sharply defining each object with crisp highlights while maintaining its contour, exemplifies what Alberto Cottino has described as an innovative use of light to ‘bind objects together and define them with extraordinary optical clarity’ (A. Cottino, La natura morta in Italia, Milan, 1989, vol. II, p. 691).
Scholarship surrounding the Master of Hartford is inextricably bound to the biography of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio (1571-1610). The namesake Hartford picture was first published by Charles Sterling in 1952; while Sterling there rejected the traditional attribution to the Lombard painter Fede Galizia in the second (1959) edition of La Nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours he went on to consider the composition a reflection of a lost work by Caravaggio (C. Sterling, La Nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours, Paris, 1952, p. 87; 2nd ed., 1959, p. 54). This connection was deepened in 1976 by Federico Zeri, who proposed that the Master of Hartford was none other than the young Caravaggio himself, working in the studio of Giuseppe Cesari, Cavaliere d’Arpino (F. Zeri, ‘Sull’esecuzione di natura morte nella bottega del Cavalier d’Arpino...’, Diari di lavoro 2, Turin, 1976, pp. 92-103). Zeri drew attention to the 1607 sequestration inventory of Cavaliere d’Arpino’s collection, which listed floral and fruit pieces alongside known Caravaggio masterpieces (ibid.). The close relationship with Caravaggio has also been read in the light of Giovanni Pietro Bellori’s biographical note that the young Lombard ‘was applied to painting flowers and fruit’ (‘fu applicato a dipinger fiori, e frutti’) upon his arrival in Rome (G.P. Bellori, Le vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti moderni, Rome, 1672).
Mina Gregori situates the beginnings of the Hartford Master’s activity within this specific context of the d’Arpino workshop, which she presents as a crucible for experimentation in the genre (Gregori, op. cit., pp. 49–50). She notes that his still lifes mirror key ideas developed by Caravaggio: the illumination of natural objects within a confined space, the oblique band of light across a dark wall, the basket teetering on the table edge, and glass carafes of flowers with shimmering transparencies (ibid.). While scholarly opinion remains divided on the specific identity of the Master—with candidates ranging from the young Caravaggio to Francesco Zucchi or Giovanni Battista Crescenzi—there is broad agreement that the artist worked in close sympathy with Caravaggio’s naturalism.
Within the painter’s surviving oeuvre, the present canvas marks a significant development. The distinctive combination of the grotesque-decorated vase, the sumptuous metal tazza, and the almost scientific exactitude of the fruit signals the painter’s central role in shaping Roman still-life painting as a vehicle for both sensuous display and intellectual meditation on the ‘new nature’ (Gregori, op. cit.; Coliva and Dotti, op. cit.).
We are grateful to Davide Dotti for endorsing the attribution to The Master of the Hartford Still Life on the basis of digital photographs (written communication; 7 November 2025).