Paolo Paoletti (padua, Circa 1671 - Udine, 1735), Still Life With Vegetables And Fruits

Paolo Paoletti (Padua, circa 1671 - Udine, 1735)

Still life with vegetables, fruits and mushrooms

Oil on canvas, cm 76 x 106

With frame, cm 87 x 117

Critical Profile Prof. Alberto Crispo

The new painting shown here depicts vegetables, mushrooms, fruits and flowers on sloping stone slabs; in particular we notice thistles, celery, curly salad, cucumbers, ovoli, apples, almonds and different floral varieties. The still life is a typical work of Paolo Paoletti (Padova circa 1671 - Udine 1735), as revealed by comparisons with other evidence of the artist: see in particular a painting already in the collections of the counts Thun, recently acquired from the Autonomous Province of Trento, in which we find the great thistle around which the whole composition revolves. The same reappears in other examples of our painter, as a still life already on the antique market Roman erroneously attributed to Agostino Verrocchi by Federico Zeri (Photo Library Zeri, card n. 63568), where we also see, very similar, the ovoli, The curly salad and cucumbers. The mushrooms are then reproposed in a large canvas appeared on 8 July 2010 at Sotheby’s in London, lot 188, with an absurd reference to the circle of Giuseppe Vicenzino, which also depicts flowers perfectly consistent with those outlined in our painting.

To conclude, we can point out that the curly salad and celery reappear, in very similar forms, among the elements of a still life passed over ten years ago on the English market (Christie’s South Kensington, 11 July 2008, lot 97, as Abraham Brueghel’s circle). Unlike other specialists of this pictorial genre, our artist was already remembered by the art historians of the nineteenth-century, including Luigi Lanzi, according to which "He was especially famous in flowers, and with much truth he portrayed fruits, erbaggi, fish, game" (L. Lanzi, Storia pittorica dell'Italia..., III, Firenze 1823, pp. 241-242). He was also one of the first still-life painters to whom a monograph was dedicated (T. Miotti, Le nature morte di Paolo Paoletti, Udine 1968) and thanks to his most recent studies, additional information on his life and artistic career has been added (In this regard see at least G. Bocchi, Paolo Paoletti "industre emulator della Natura", in Quadri a fiori e frutti. Dipinti di natura morta a Castel Thun e nei musei trentini, exhibition catalogue, edited by E. Mich, Trento 2009, pp. 75-83; A. Craievich, A Venetian track for Paolo Paoletti, in L'impegno e la conoscenza. Studi di storia dell'arte in onore di Egidio Martini, edited by F. Pedrocco, Verona 2009, pp. 226-231). We therefore know that he was born in Padua around 1671, since the death certificate of 1735 says that he was about sixty-four years old, and that he moved to Udine very soon, he was not yet twenty. We also have news of a stay in Venice, having been enrolled at the local Fraglia of painters from 1708 to 1715, even if already on this last date it was "out" and since 1712 had been exempted from paying the corresponding tax, perhaps because he no longer resided in the city. It is therefore probable that at the age of forty he returned to Udine, where he was protected by Count Leonardo Caiselli, who hosted him in his palace in the village of San Cristoforo, and painted still lifes for his patron and other patrons, as the Lanzi still reports: "The family that hosted him has a whole room of these delicacies; and many own other houses within and outside Friuli" (L. Lanzi, Storia pittorica... cit., p. 315). His paintings were in Palazzo Giacomelli, in Palazzo de' Concina, in the villa of Attimis Maniago di Buttrio, in the residence of the counts Florio, in villa Canciani in Varmo and in the castle Valentinis in Tricesimo, while other works were in the Wram collection of Gorizia and in the castle of the Counts Zoppola near Pordenone.Paoletti died in Udine in 1735, as confirmed by the documents kept at the archive of the church of San Cristoforo.