(active in Rome at the end of the 16th and the first decade of the 17th Century)
A glass vase with daffodils, wild lilies, dahlias and a butterfly, on a wooden ledge,
oil on canvas, octagonal, 58 x 43 cm, framed

Provenance:
art market, Bologna, late 1980s;
where acquired by the present owner

Literature:
A. L. Zanotti, A. Iacoviello, Con l’occhio del naturalista. Per un riconoscimento delle specie botaniche nei dipinti di natura morta, in: A. Bacchi, F. Mambelli, E. Sambo (eds.), La natura morta di Federico Zeri, Bologna 2015, p. 290, fig. 3 (as ‘Maestro di Hartford’)

This painting is registered in the Fototeca Zeri under no. 85815 (as ‘Maestro di Hartford’).

The present painting was identified as a work of the Master of the Hartford Still Life by Federico Zeri. The scholar named a series of still life paintings which had been stylistically gathered around a painting conserved in the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art, Hartford. The precise identity of the artist under this moniker is still the subject of scholarly debate.

In an exhibition in the Orangerie in Paris in 1952, the Wadsworth Athenaeum still life was attributed to Fede Galizia (1527–1596) (see C. Sterling, La Nature morte de l’antiquité à nos jours, exhibition catalogue, Paris, 1952, p. 88, n. 66). During the 1960s and 1970s various scholars grouped other paintings around the Hartford canvas, all of which shared stylistic similarities.

Zeri proposed associating two further still life paintings in the Galleria Borghese (inv. no. 301 and inv. no. 054) with the Hartford painting (see F. Zeri, Sull’esecuzione di ‘nature morte’ nella bottega del Cavalier d’Arpino, e sulla presenza ivi del giovane Caravaggio, Diari di lavoro 2, Turin 1976, pp. 92–104). Significantly, Zeri identified these two still life paintings, today in the Galleria Borghese, as being the ones mentioned in the inventory of works confiscated from Giuseppe Cesari, il Cavalier d’Arpino by Pope Paul V Borghese in 1607. The pope gave these works to his nephew, Scipione Borghese, who created a celebrated collection, including other works confiscated from d’Arpinio including Caravaggio’s: the Self-portrait in the guise of Bacchus, or the Sick Bacchus and the Youth with a basket of fruit, both of which are also still conserved in the Galleria Borghese (inv. no. 534 and inv. no. 136).

Zeri associated the works given to the Master of Hartford with the early development and output of Caravaggio. As the biographer Giovanni Pietro Bellori recorded, Caravaggio was initially engaged in painting fruits and flowers during his time in the studio of il Cavalier d’Arpino (see G. P. Bellori, Le Vite de’ pittori, scultori, et architetti moderni, Rome 1672, p. 202). Zeri’s suggestion that the works by the Master of the Hartford should be associated with the young Caravaggio was not unanimously accepted. Subsequently, this complex matter has become the subject of further studies, positioning the anonymous painter of the Hartford canvas in the ambit of still life painters in precisely the same cultural orbit as Caravaggio, and limiting this group to those of the circle of the Cavalier d’Arpino (for the latest contributions on the subject, see A. Morandotti, Il Maestro di Hartford ai primi tempi di Caravaggio a Roma, in: A. Bacchi, D. Benati, M. Natale, Il mestiere del conoscitore – Federico Zeri, Bologna 2021, pp. 340–367 and A. Coliva, D. Dotti, L’origine della natura morta in Italia. Caravaggio e il maestro di Hartford, exhibition catalogue, Rome 2016).

The present painting is of exceptional quality, and it displays the stylistic traits that distinguish the works at present assigned to the Master of Hartford, and especially to the painting he is named after in the Wadsworth Athenaeum Museum of Art. This is particularly evident in the sophisticated and innovative approach apparent in the present painting, especially in the manner in which the artist represents light, calibrating its fall on objects in order to create extraordinary optical clarity, and depicting the reflections on individual objects, as well as in the translucency of the glass vase. The painter’s approach to the rendering of shadow confers a physicality of volume to form, note for example the three-dimensionality of the butterfly, momentarily alighted on the stem of a flower. Such compositional and stylistic solutions are visible in some of Caravaggio’s early works: see for example the glass vase in the foreground of the Boy bitten by a Lizard in the National Gallery, London (inv. no. NG6504) or the glass decanter in the right foreground of the Lute player in the Hermitage, Saint Petersburg (inv. no. ГЭ-45). The form of the glass vessel and the depiction of the bunch of flowers is stylistically close to the present painting.

As Zeri observed, the artist revealed a ‘singular predisposition for botanical detail in his unusual choice of fruits and flowers’ [‘singolare propensione botanica e infine, nell’insolita scelta di fiori e frutti’] (op. cit. Zeri, 1976, p. 95). Indeed, the quantity of flowers depicted in this painting is of interest, including simple and double columbine, marigold, celandine, orange blossom, English iris, daisies, roses, and red wallflowers, as is the inclusion of a plant such as the black-eyed bean, which is rarely found in still life painting from this period (for the identification of the various botanical species see op. cit. Zanotti/Iacoviello, 2015, pp. 287–319). The attention given to depicting such a variety of plants underlines the artist’s objective of creating an image of faithful and realistic pictorial representation.

Whilst there may be no general agreement as to the precise identity of the Master of Hartford at present, it is acknowledged that the painter worked in the studio of the Cavalier d’Arpino, asserting himself as an avantgarde still life painter in Rome at the start of the Seicento, revolutionising the genre in Italy and throughout Europe.