Pensionante del Saraceni

French (?), active c. 1610/1620

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brother of Carlo Saraceni who was also a painter

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Melons, apples, pears, and other fruits, along with a glass vessel and chestnuts, are arranged along a tabletop covered by a white cloth in this horizontal still life painting. The left edge of the table is close to that edge of the canvas, and the table extends off the right edge. Starting at the left, the melon near the edge of the table has a forest-green rind with coral-colored flesh. Just behind it, to our right, the spherical glass vessel is about half filled with amber liquid. Next to the melon and in front of the vessel is a dark-skinned fig and a cluster of three red berries. At the center of the composition, a pewter plate holds three yellow and red apples and a fourth piece of fruit, perhaps a pear or apple, cut in half. There are also several green grapes, a pomegranate split open to expose the ruby-red seeds, and two more black-skinned figs cut so the rose-pink flesh shows. A bunch of dark purple grapes and a green leaf spill out of the right side onto the table. A wedge of pink watermelon with black seeds sits on the far right toward the back of the table. A yellow and pink pear stands near the front of the table to our right, and a handful of chestnuts is scattered between the pear and watermelon. Two tiny insects, like small flies, sit on the tablecloth, one near the melon to our left and the other on the front of the tablecloth near the lower center. Bright light from the upper left glints off the carafe, the edge of the plate, and the seeds of the pomegranate and watermelon, and it creates deep shadows around the fruit. The background lightens from earth brown along the top to sable brown near the table to our right.
Pensionante del Saraceni, Still Life with Fruit and Carafe, c. 1610/1620, oil on canvas, Samuel H. Kress Collection, 1939.1.159

Still Life with Fruit and Carafe

Pensionante del Saraceni · c. 1610/1620 · oil on canvas ·  Accession ID  1939.1.159

Bibliography

1943

  • Longhi, Roberto. "Ultimi studi sul Caravaggio e la sua cerchia." Proporzioni 1 (1943): 23-24.

1968

  • Ottani Cavina, Anna. Carlo Saraceni. Milan, 1968: 49-50.

1984

  • Ottani Cavina, Anna. "Per il Pensionante del Saraceni." In Scritti di storia dell'arte in onore di Federico Zeri. 2 vols. Milan, 1984: 608-614.

1996

  • De Grazia, Diane, and Eric Garberson, with Edgar Peters Bowron, Peter M. Lukehart, and Mitchell Merling. Italian Paintings of the Seventeenth and Eighteenth Centuries. The Collections of the National Gallery of Art Systematic Catalogue. Washington, D.C., 1996: 198-199.