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Catalogue raisonné: Description in Italian Paintings: Three Centuries of Collecting, Nationalmuseum, Stockholm, 2015, cat.no. 90: 


FORMER INV. NOS.: 347 (M. 1796–97); 460 (F. 1798); 278 (M. 1804);
KM 245.
TECHNICAL NOTES: The support is a single piece of medium-
coarse, plain-weave linen fabric. It has been lined with glue
and mounted on a non-original stretcher. The ground is red and
covers the whole support. The paint layer is abraded and, owing
to the lining process, impastos have been flattened out. There
are several retouches and overpaintings. The varnish is thick and
yellowed.

PROVENANCE: Martelli 1804.

BIBLIOGRAPHY: NM Cat. 1867, p. 3 (as Bonzi); 
Sander 1872–76,III, p. 118, no. 278 (as Bonzi or Spadino); 
NM Cat. 1958, p. 188 (as Spadino); NM Cat. 1990, p. 338
(as Spadino).

While not striving for the exactness of the
Neapolitan school of still life painting, Spadino
nevertheless achieved a certain kind of realism
through his intense study of the variation and
nuances of colour of the fruits and vegetables he
pictured. Only a few of his peers could capture
the skin texture of a watermelon or cantaloupe
– contrasted with the perfectly rendered bright
colours of the flesh of the fruit – in quite the
same way. And few others of Spadino’s generation
could paint the cloudy hue of the skin of
green and red grapes, or the velvety skin of the
peach, in such a consummate manner. Colour
was Spadino’s main tool and with it he achieved
extraordinary results. Another characteristic of
Spadino’s still lifes is that he seldom used interiors
such as kitchens as a background; instead,
he frequently opted for landscapes, often of a
dramatic kind.

These traits are all exhibited in the present
painting, where the fruit is deliberately hung
and laid together with a pronounced and impressive
verticality in mind. Spadino displays
all his fortes, contrasting the bright red of the
watermelon effectively with the muted green of
the vine leaves and of the grapes hung over it,
and with the yellowish skin of the peaches laid
next to it. The reddish and the yellow, ochre and
orange of the flesh of the cantaloupe and the
peaches are reused in the dramatic twilight of the
background sky, with the setting of the sun to
the left. Through this compositional interplay of
colours, Spadino achieves a mood that is warm
and yet quite dark.

Amongst Spadino’s previously known works,
the painting is similar, for example, to the Fruit
and Other Objects in the Pinacoteca Capitolina,
signed and dated 1703, and the Fruit in a Garden
with a Parrot in the Musée Fesch, Ajaccio.¹
Few certain works by the Spadinos were known
before research concerning the family’s oeuvre
was instigated in earnest in the 1950s.² The few
mentions of their work in inventories from the
18th century can now be supplemented with the
present painting and its early listing in the Martelli
inventories, further cementing the Spadinos’
importance and reach at the time. Martelli’s
original inventory in fact lists five canvases by
Spadino. The other four seem to have consisted
of two pairs of pendant paintings. One of these
pairs (NM 5268 and 5269, cat. nos. 91–92) has an
oval format, which is rare among Spadino’s previously
known works. The other pair is possibly
to be identified with two Martelli paintings later
attributed to Bonzi (NM 34 and 35, cat. nos.
9–10).³
dp
1 Salerno 1984, pp. 266–267.
2 Ibid., pp. 265–269; Salerno 1989, pp. 89–96.
3 NM Archives, Kongl. Museum, F:1, Catalogue du Cabinet
de Martelli (à Rome). [End]

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Giovanni Paolo Spadino | Fruktstycke med landskapsbakgrund | Nationalmuseum

Giovanni Paolo Spadino | Fruit Piece with a Landscape Background | Nationalmuseum

Foto: Erik Cornelius / Nationalmuseum 2012