Still Life with Squash, Gourds, Stoneware, and a Basket with Fruit and Cheese

Provenance: Private Collection, South America Antonio Tempesta began his career in Florence, working on the decoration of the Palazzo Vecchio under the direction of Giorgio Vasari. He was a pupil first of Santi di Tito...

Provenance: Alfred (1883-1961) and Hermine Stiassni (1889-1962), Brno, Czech Republic, by 1925; thence London, 1938-1940; thence Los Angeles, 1940-1962; thence by descent to: Susanne Stiassni Martin and Leonard Martin, San Francisco, until 2005; thence by descent to: Private Collection, California Exhibited: Künstlerhaus, Brünn (Brno), 1925, as by Ribera. “Art of Collecting,” Flint Institute of Art, Flint, Michigan, 23 November 2018 – 6 January 2019. Literature: Alte Meister...

Circle of Jacques-Louis David (French, 18th Century) Provenance: Private Collection, Buenos Aires Exhibited: “Art of Collecting,” Flint Institute of Art, Flint, Michigan, 23 November 2018 – 6 January 2019. This vibrant portrait of young man was traditionally considered a work by Jacques-Louis David, whose style it recalls, but to whom it cannot be convincingly attributed. Rather, it would appear to be by a painter in his immediate following—an artist likely working in France in the first decade of the nineteenth century. Several names have been proposed as the portrait’s author: François Gérard, Louis Hersent, Anne-Louis Girodet (Fig. 1), Theodore Gericault, and Jean-Baptiste Wicar, among others. Some have thought the artist Italian, and have proposed Andrea Appiani, Gaspare Landi...

Provenance: Torres Family Collection, Asunción, Paraguay, ca. 1967-2017 While the genre of portraiture flourished in the New World, very few examples of early Spanish colonial portraits have survived to the present day. This remarkable painting is a rare example of female portraiture, depicting a member of the highest echelons of society in Cuzco during the last quarter of the 17th century. Its most distinctive feature is the false beauty mark (called a chiqueador) that the sitter wears on her left temple. Chiqueadores served both a cosmetic and medicinal function. In addition to beautifying their wearers, these silk or velvet pouches often contained medicinal herbs thought to cure headaches. This painting depicts an unidentified lady from the Creole elite in Cuzco. Her formal posture and black costume are both typical of the established conventions of period portraiture and in line with the severe fashion of the Spanish court under the reign of Charles II, which remained current until the 18th century. She is shown in three-quarter profile, her long braids tied with soft pink bows and decorated with quatrefoil flowers, likely made of silver. Her facial features are idealized and rendered with great subtly, particularly in the rosy cheeks. While this portrait lacks the conventional coat of arms or cartouche that identifies the sitter, her high status is made clear by the wealth of jewels and luxury materials present in the painting. She is placed in an interior, set off against the red velvet curtain tied in the middle with a knot on her right, and the table covered with gold-trimmed red velvet cloth at the left. The sitter wears a four-tier pearl necklace with a knot in the center with matching three-tiered pearl bracelets and a cross-shaped earing with three increasingly large pearls. She also has several gold and silver rings on both hands—one holds a pair of silver gloves with red lining and the other is posed on a golden metal box, possibly a jewelry box. The materials of her costume are also of the highest quality, particularly the white lace trim of her wide neckline and circular cuffs. The historical moment in which this painting was produced was particularly rich in commissions of this kind. Following his arrival in Cuzco from Spain in the early 1670’s, bishop Manuel de Mollinedo y Angulo actively promoted the emergence of a distinctive regional school of painting in the city. Additionally, with the increase of wealth and economic prosperity in the New World, portraits quickly became a way for the growing elite class to celebrate their place in society and to preserve their memory. Portraits like this one would have been prominently displayed in a family’s home, perhaps in a dynastic portrait gallery. We are grateful to Professor Luis Eduardo Wuffarden for his assistance cataloguing this painting on the basis of high-resolution images. He has written that “the sober palette of the canvas, the quality of the pigments, the degree of aging, and the craquelure pattern on the painting layer confirm it to be an authentic and representative work of the Cuzco school of painting...

Provenance: Robert Hollberton, Antigua, ca. 1841 Private Collection, New York The present painting depicts Old St. John’s Cathedral on the island of Antigua. The church was erected in the 1720s on the designs of the architect Robert Cullen. It measured 130 feet by 50 feet with north and south porches 23 x 20 ½ feet. The tower, 50 feet high with its cupola, was added in 1789. The church was elevated to the status of a cathedral, but disaster struck in the form of an earthquake that destroyed the building on 8 February 1843. A memorandum of that date relates the event: “On Wednesday, 8th February, 1843, this island was visited by a most terrific and destructive earthquake. At twenty minutes before eleven o’clock in the forenoon, while the bell was ringing for prayers, and the venerable Robert Holberton was in the vestry-room, awaiting the arrival of persons to have their marriage solemnized, before the commencement of the morning service, the whole edifice, from one end to the other, was suddenly and violently agitated. Every one within the church, after the first shock, was compelled to escape for his life. The tower was rent from the top to the bottom; the north dial of the clock precipitated to the ground with a dreadful crash; the east parapet wall of the tower thrown upon the roof of the church; almost the whole of the north-west wall by the north gallery fell out in a mass; the north-east wall was protruded beyond the perpendicular; the altar-piece, the public monument erected to the memory of lord Lavington, and the private monuments, hearing the names of Kelsick, Warner, Otley, and Atkinson, fell down piecemeal inside; a large portion of the top of the east wall fell, and the whole of the south-east wall was precipitated into the churchyard, carrying along with it two of the cast-iron windows, while the other six remained projecting from the walls in which they had been originally inserted; a large pile of heavy cut stones and masses of brick fell down at the south and at the north doors; seven of the large frontpipes of the organ were thrown out by the violence of the shock, and many of the metal and wooden pipes within displaced; the massive basin of the font was tossed from the pedestal on which it rested, and pitched upon the pavement beneath uninjured. Thus, within the space of three minutes, this church was reduced to a pile of crumbling ruins; the walls that were left standing being rent in every part, the main roof only remaining sound, being supported by the hard wood pillars.” The entrance from the southern side into the cathedral, which was erected in 1789, included two imposing statues, one of Saint John the Divine and the other of Saint John the Baptist in flowing robes. It is said that these statues were confiscated by the British Navy from the French ship HMS Temple in Martinique waters in 1756 during the Seven Years’ War and moved to the church. The statues are still in situ and can be seen today, much as they appeared in Bisbee’s painting, but with the new cathedral in the background (Fig. 1). Little is known of the career of Ezra Bisbee. He was born in Sag Harbor, New York in 1808 and appears to have had a career as a political cartoonist and a printmaker. His handsome Portrait of President Andrew Jackson is dated 1833, and several political lithographs...

Signed and dated, lower left: Louise Hersent/ 1823 Provenance: Private Collection, Chicago, by 1996 Private Collection, Florida This charming portrait of a young boy is the work of Louise-Marie-Jeanne Hersent, a little-known woman artist of the French Restoration often identified by her maiden name, Mauduit. While Hersent—as we will call her here following the signature on the painting—has been understudied, the known details of her life and career reveal that she held a privileged position in artistic life in the early nineteenth century in Paris. She exhibited at the Salon from 1810 until 1824, and in 1821 she married the painter Louis Hersent, a successful pupil of Jacques-Louis David who was patronized by Louis XVIII and Charles X. It is likely through her husband’s royal patronage that Hersent’s Louis XIV Visits Peter the Great was purchased for the Royal Collection in Versailles. In 1806, while still Louise Mauduit, she painted a portrait of Napoleon’s youngest sister, Pauline Bonaparte...

Suiveur De Cornelis De Heem (1631-1695) Bouquet de fleurs dans un vase, huile sur toile. 69x56,5 cm

JUAN DE ARELLANO Spanish, 1614 - 1676 Cesta de Flores signed Juan de Arellano (lower lright) oil on canvas original period carved, gilt and polychrome...

English School, circa 1827 A gentleman’s vices the newspaper dated ‘Sunday December 23 1827’ (upper left) oil on canvas 20 ¾ x 24 ½ in. (52.7 x 62.3 cm.) frame 25 ⅝ x 29 ¼ in. (65.1...

Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560 - 1627) was one of the most important still life painters in Spain and beyond. He developed a certain type of still life with a ...

This painting is reproduced in the reference book on Roman still life "Pittori di nature morta a Roma - artisti italiani 1630 -1750" by Gianluca and Ulisse Bocchi - Arti Grafiche Castello 2005 (page 250 figure FS5), where it is mentioned as one of the few paintings that can be given with certainty to Giovanni Stanchi. This highly decorative flower garland reveals a very strong Flemish influence, enabling us to attribute it with certainty to Giovanni Stanchi, the eldest of a sibling group of painters active in the production of still lifes in 17th century Rome. Probably painted before 1640, our garland conceals a mystical message beneath its decorative opulence, which we're about to reveal ... 1. Giovanni, Niccolò and Angelo Stanchi, a brotherhood of still-life painters in 17th-century Baroque Rome The three Stanchi brothers, Giovanni (1608 - after 1675), Niccolò (ca. 1623 - 1690) and Angelo (1626 - after 1675) lived and worked together (like the Le Nain brothers), making identification of the different hands perilous. Giovanni Stanchi's name is first mentioned in 1634, in the register of the painters' guild of the "Accademia di San Luca". Paid membership of the painters' guild provided not only a social network, but also commissions from important Roman families. In 1638, Giovanni Stanchi painted a picture for the Barberini family depicting their coat of arms surrounded by flowers. In 1660, he was commissioned by Cardinal Flavio Chigi to decorate a gallery with still lifes of flowers and fruit. The Chigis remained his principal patrons until after 1673. Thereafter, he received commissions from almost every important family in Rome. An invoice dated 1670 identifies Giovanni Stanchi and Mario Nuzzi as the painters responsible for the still lifes that decorated the famous mirrors in Palazzo Colonna. In 1675, Giovanni Stanchi's name appears for the last time in connection with a project in which he was engaged, together with Andries Bosman and the figure painter Ciro Ferri, to decorate the mirrors of the Palazzo Borghese on Campo Marzio. Although all three brothers were active as painters, the records of their commissions always refer to Giovanni, since, as eldest brother, he was responsible for invoices and contracts. Only in a few cases is the name of one of the younger brothers mentioned. Only paintings with a strong Flemish influence dating from the first four decades of the 17th century, such as this one, can be attributed with certainty to Giovanni, as he was the only painter in the family at the time. 2. History of a genre: the flower garland Jan Brueghel the Elder (Brussels 1568 - Antwerp 1625) is credited with inventing the flower garland theme during his stay in Rome in 1592. Such garlands were originally used to surround a religious subject, often a Marian one. This religious scene could sometimes be painted by another artist, as in the painting acquired in 1608 by Cardinal Borromeo, featuring a Madonna (painted by Henry van Balen), surrounded by a garland painted by Jan Brueghel. This theme was taken up and developed in Rome from 1625 onwards by Daniel Seghers, before the young Giovanni Stanchi made it his own, reinforcing its symbolic dimension (to which we shall return) and moving away from the naturalistic approach of Jan Brueghel to develop a certain idealization of each flower, closer to the style of Mario Nuzzi (Rome 1603 - 1673). Giovanni Stanchi's garlands, of which he was the best Italian interpreter in the 17th century, also reveal him to be one of the most faithful to the Flemish tradition. The book by Gianluca and Ulisse Bocchi lists nine still lifes very similar to ours, all executed on a black background (including the one reproduced as the last photo in the gallery, which belongs to the Pinacoteca Nazionale in Bologna). Because of their proximity to Flemish works, they can be attributed with certainty to Giovanni Stanchi. Four of them belong to private collections, while the others are all in public institutions (Anhaltische Gemäldegalerie, Dessau; Galeria del Palazzo Bianco, Genoa; Musée des Beaux-Arts, Bordeaux; Pinacoteca Nazionale, Bologna; Palazzo Chigi-Saraceni, Siena). Like those in Flemish still lifes, the flowers depicted by Giovanni Stanchi bloom at different times of the year, ruling out any representation of a real bouquet. Alongside the more traditional flowers of our gardens (roses, tulips, hyacinths, daffodils, irises), it is also interesting to note the frequent inclusion of more exotic flowers such as jasmine and blue bindweed (ipomoea indica), which had been recently introduced to Europe from Mexico. Each flower painted by Giovanni Stanchi seems to have its own individuality, a trait characteristic of Flemish painting, of which Stanchi was the best interpreter in Italy. One could say that Stanchi does not depict garlands of flowers, but flowers in a garland, each with its own identity and specificity, making it unique and different from the others. Captured in a low-angled light that seems to have captured them for eternity, they are drawn with clear, precise lines. As if they had been freshly cut, they emerge from the darkness in geometric figures that reinforce the tactile quality of their representation. One of Giovanni Stanchi's distinctive features is to have substituted the central religious representation traditionally associated with Flemish flower...

Still life - Oil on canvas cm.100x150, Antonio Jannone, Italy, 2003. Frame available on request.