(Rome active circa 1600)
Grapes, celery, peaches in a metal bowl and other fruit in a basket on a stone ledge; and
A vase of flowers, figs on a pedestalled platter and water-melons, plums, peaches and cherries on a stone ledge,
oil on canvas, each 94 x 135 cm, unframed, a pair (2)

Provenance:
art market, Milan, 1996;
Private collection, Imperia, 1997;
Private Collection, Italy

Literature:
A. Ottani Cavina (ed.), Prospettiva Zeri, Turin 2009, pp. 126-127, figs. 18-19 (as Master of Hartford);
A. Cottino, Riesaminando il Maestro di Hartford. Riflessioni a margine di mostre e convegni, in: Valori tattili, 2011, pp. 31-32, figs. 7-8 (as Giovanni Quinsa);
A. Coliva/D. Dotti (eds.), L’origine della natura morta in Italia. Caravaggio e il Maestro di Hartford, Milan 2016, pp. 128-129 and p. 143, note 52 (as Giovanni Quinsa)

The present paintings are registered in the archieve of the Fototeca Zeri (nos. 85809-85810) as the Master of Hartford (Fondazione Federico Zeri, Photo-archive, coll. Ex. 636/5).

The Master of Hartford, or the Master of the Hartford Still Life, is an anonymous artist who was active in Rome during the early years of the seventeenth century. Federico Zeri created the moniker after one of the artist’s most emblematic works, the Still life with flowers and fruits in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford, Connecticut. Scholarship is still divided over the identity of this artist, who is, nevertheless, recognised as one of the most original practitioners of still-life painting and an innovator of the genre that was to become increasingly popular in Rome and other Italian cities during the 17th century.

Zeri identified the painting now in the Wadsworth Atheneum, Hartford as among the works that were once in the Roman studio of the artist Giuseppe Cesari, called Cavalier d’Arpino and requisitioned by Pope Paul V Borghese in 1607 (see F. Zeri, Sull’esecuzione di ‘nature morte’ nella bottega del Cavalier d’Arpino, e sulla presenza ivi del giovane Caravaggio, in: Diari di Lavoro, Turin 1976, II, pp. 92-103). Among the requisitioned paintings were works by Caravaggio, who had studied in Cavalier d’Arpino´s workshop. Two more paintings that belong to the group of the requisitioned works and which have been given to the Master of Hartford are still in the Galleria Borghese, Rome, A vase of flowers with fruit and vegetables and a Still life with game birds and an owl (A. Bacchi et al., La natura morta di Federico Zeri, Bologna 2015, p. 20–21, fig. 9–10)

With regard to the present two works under discussion Anna Ottani Cavina has sustained the attribution to the Master of Hartford, confirming their affinity to the Borghese canvases and noting, as Zeri did, that the glass vase containing flowers is a typical element found in works by the artist (see literature). Moreover, Ottani Cavina drew particular attention to the presence of ‘motivi Lombardi come le due fruttiere’ [‘Lombard motifs such as the two fruit dishes’] in the present two works. Zeri suggested that behind the hand of the anonymous artist known as the Master of Hartford, the young Caravaggio may possibly be found, whilst he was still at the begining of his career and training in the studio of Cavalier d’Arpino around 1593 (see op. cit. Zeri, 1976).

An alternative attribution for the present pair of paintings has been suggested by Cottino and other art historians (see literature) giving the works to the Spanish artist Giovanni Quinsa (Naples active mid-17th century). This attribution is based on a work offered at Sotheby’s in 2004, together with its pendant, representing a Vase of flowers and fruit on a table, signed by Quinsa and dated 1643 (Sotheby’s, London, 9 December 2004, lots 197 and 198).

Technical analysis:
As suggested by IR and transmitted IR images, the paintings were enlarged with the addition of the upper quarter at an unknown time. The original canvas is dense and prepared with a brown ground which has a peculiar bright aspect if seen in IR reflectography, indicating the darker halos are painted with a pigment highly transparent to IR radiation, i.e. a brown earth rich of organic component like Kassel earth, coherently with Reflectance Spectroscopy spectra. These halos in the background are peculiar, similar to those used by Caravaggio in works of his first activity in Rome, around 1597.

Both paintings show the same practice in depicting the leaves and some fruits. Some lines of underdrawing and a few incisions to build some elements of the composition can be noticed under IR and raking light, especially in one canvas.

Pigments include lead white, a lead-based yellow, vermillion, yellow ochre and brown earths. In the black grapes of one painting spectroscopic exams suggest the presence of a highly discoloured smalt blue, indicating that original blue shades disappeared along the centuries because of the interactions between the glass-based smalt pigment and the drying oil medium. The lead-containing yellow was also added to dark mixtures as in the figs, and in the greens of leaves and fruits, mostly in lighter zones, together with an unidentified blue-green pigment. In the flowers, a high quality carmine-type red lake was detected, and a few red lake was used for the shadows of the red fruits painted with vermillion. As microscopic exams state, the brown ground is made with iron oxides, mixed with parts of vermillion and of a blue-green pigment, as well as other materials coming from the palette the painter used.

We are grateful to Gianluca Poldi for the technical examination of the present paintings.