(Hamburg 1658–1722 Rome)
Fruit and flowers on a stone plinth,
inscribed at lower left and right: B. C. F./ Roma.,
oil on panel, 47 x 37 cm, framed

We are grateful to Fred Meijer for confirming the attribution of the present painting on the basis of a photograph.

Berentz was certainly one of the leading Dutch still life painters in Rome in the late 17th and early 18th centuries and one of the few artists mentioned in Lione Pascoli’s Vite de’ pittori, scultori e architetti moderni, which appeared in 1736. He first studied under Kamphusen in Hamburg and is documented as living in Rome from 1680 onwards. Two still lifes inscribed ‘Roma’ (both Hamburg, Kunsthalle) date from the same year. In Rome the artist joined the circle of Dutch painters and was given the nickname Gausblum (‘golden flower’). According to Pascoli, Marchese Niccolò Maria Pallavicini was one of his most important patrons, who also commissioned works from Berentz’s contemporaries, such as Karel Vogelaer and Franz Werner von Tamm.

These three painters also worked in the Palazzo Pallavicini, where they joined Carlo Maratta; two works by Berentz are known to have resulted from this collaboration (Naples, Museo Capodimonte, and St. Petersburg, Hermitage): where the still life elements were executed by Berentz, Carlo Maratta painted the figures. These examples, as well as the present composition display the elegance with which Berentz arranged his pictorial components: the realistic and naturalistic depiction of fruit, with one or several pieces of them skilfully rendered open.