(Naples 1639–1723)
Fruit sellers by a fountain with vegetables and flowers,
oil on canvas, 75 x 102 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private European collection, since the 1980s

We are grateful to Riccardo Lattuada for suggesting the attribution after examining the present painting in the original.

The present painting relates to the composition by Luca Giordano and Francesco Della Questa formerly in the Podio collection (see R. Lattuada, Luca Giordano e i maestri napoletani di natura morta nelle tele per la festa del Corpus Domini del 1684, in: G. Zampino (ed.), Capolavori in Festa: effimero barocco a Largo di Palazzo (1683-1759), exhibition catalogue, Naples 1997, pp. 150-161). Francesco Della Questa executed the vegetables and the fruit while Giordano painted the figures.

In the present work Della Questa replicated the celebrated composition in a smaller format with variants.
The large Podio canvas was part of a series of fourteen paintings commissioned from Luca Giordano by Marchese del Carpio for the Feast of Corpus Domini in 1684 in Naples. For this important enterprise, Giordano recruited the greatest painters of the Neapolitan Baroque, such as Giuseppe Recco, Giovan Battista Ruoppolo, Abraham Brueghel and Francesco Della Questa.

It is possible to compare the present painting to other similar works by Francesco Della Questa, such as the Still life with figures in the Sestieri collection, Rome and the Still life in the Steffanoni collection, Bergamo (see N. Spinosa, Pittura del Seicento a Napoli. Da Mattia Preti a Luca Giordano. Natura in posa, Naples 2011, p. 257).