(Hamburg 1658–1722 Rome)
A still life of fruit and flowers with a glass bottle and a Venetian glass on a silver plate,
oil on canvas, 50 x 66 cm, framed

Provenance:
Galerie Bruno Meissner, Zurich;
Private collection, Switzerland

We are grateful to Alberto Cottino for the identification of the artist. A written report is available.

Although born in Hamburg, Berentz was one of northern artist who became famous as still life painters in Rome. Having arrived in the eternal city, he was employed by the collector and patron Marchese Niccolò Maria Pallavicini, who invited him to establish his studio in the Palazzo Pallavicini. Pascoli, Berentz’s Biographer, describes how the artist was taken by other Roman masters as collaborator at a relatively early stage. Carlo Maratta began working together with him almost immediately (L. Pascoli, Vite, 1730-36, II, p. 357-367). Evidence for this fruitful collaboration is given by several known works, such as the large still life dated 1696, today in the Galleria Nazionale di Capodimonte in Naples, as well as Berentz’s masterpiece, executed in collaboration with Maratta, a sumptouos still life today in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg. The compositional motif of the peaches on a reflecting pewter or silver plate, the small bottle and the elegant Venetian glass, the elements that define the present work, are repeated in an almost identical arrangement in a detail of the Hermitage painting. This suggests that the present painting may have been intended as a preparatory study, or gives evidence of Berentz’s reusing sketches made for the Saint Petersburg still life. The second interpretation of these facts would be endorsed by the existence of another small painting showing elements of the present work and of a large scale still life, which was sold at Christie’s, New York, 26 May 2000 (lot 82). Berentz maintained a sharpness and clarity in his colourful compositions, comparable with works by other foreign artists working in Rome, such as Abraham Brueghel, following the Northern traditions of still life painting (see L. Salerno, La Natura Morta in Italia, 1984, p. 260).