GIOVANNI PAOLO CASTELLI, known as «LO SPADINO» (Rome 1659 – circa 1730) Still Life with Fruit Composition Measurements: frame cm W 76.5 x H 61 x D 6.5. Canvas cm W 55.5 x H 40 Price: private negotiation item accompanied by our certificate of authenticity and expertise (downloadable at the bottom of the page) The painting, of remarkable quality and made with oil on canvas, depicts a Still Life with Fruit Composition. White and black grapes, peaches, figs, quinces are described inside a glass bowl whose transparency is masterfully rendered thanks to fine highlights that enhance the reflections of light. The composition occupies the entire canvas; grapes, vine leaves and some fruits placed outside the bowl are partially depicted as if they were coming out of the viewer's sight and the frame. A typically Baroque artifice that accentuates the theatricality and abundance, towards a non-static and engaging composition. Little is visible of the environment in which the fruit is described; this in fact is illuminated by a light coming from the left that highlights the colors and shapes thanks to a skillful use of shadows, even very pronounced ones. Stylistically, the work profiles itself as an addition to the catalog of Giovanni Paolo Castelli known as Spadino (Rome 1659-1730). The exuberant Baroque decoration, the quality in the description of the fruits and the saturated and vibrant chromatic palette are elements that distinguish the now known works of the Roman painter. Giovanni Paolo Castelli, known as «lo Spadino», is the most famous exponent of a family of artists specializing in still lifes, active in Rome in the second half of the 17th century and in the first decades of the following one. These are three related painters, the Castelli: the brothers Bartolomeo (1641-1686) and Giovanni Paolo, separated by eighteen years of age, and the son of the latter, also named Bartolomeo (1696-1738). Giovanni Paolo is the most well-known and documented of the Castelli, known as «Lo Spadino», a term deriving from a small dagger that he symbolically inserted between the fruit of a painting and a pseudonym that he also used in official documents and which was later taken up by his son. Son of Felice, originally from Montalto delle Marche, and Domenica Crescenzi, from Rome, he was born in Rome on April 8, 1659. On March 28, 1690, the painter married Apollonia De Marchis, daughter and sister of two “quadrari”, Giovanni and Tommaso, who then took care of spreading Castelli's works. From the documents we know that Giovanni Paolo resided permanently in Rome, as testified by the states of souls of the parishes of San Lorenzo in Lucina and Santa Maria del Popolo. He spent all his youth near the port of Ripetta, and always lived nearby (via del Babuino, il Corso, strada dei Condotti). Between 1680 and 1683 there is a documentary gap due to the fact that the painter served a prison sentence for homicide. He received his first formative rudiments in the workshop of his older brother, Bartolomeo, also a still life painter. Upon his death, in 1686, Giovanni Paolo inherited the workshop, the paintings present and the clientele, thus receiving important commissions from noble Roman families (his works are inventoried in the most important Roman and Italian art galleries, such as those of Corsini, Colonna, Borghese, Pamphili, Chigi). The fact that Giovanni Herinans, a Flemish painter of the Pamphili house, was Giovanni Paolo's godfather and that Adriano Honinck was linked to Bartolomeo Castelli demonstrates the close relations with the Nordic artistic environment. Furthermore, in the years from 1671 to 1674 he lived near Abraham Brueghel, whose works had a decisive influence on him, from whom he inherited the taste for intense colors combined in an audacious way. He was also significantly influenced by the German Christian Berentz (1658-1722), who arrived in Rome in the 1680s and remained there until his death. Through the latter example he borrowed the habit of including transparent or reflective objects such as crystal glasses, glass fruit bowls, silverware, in the compositions, which allowed him to explore the multiple possibilities of light effects. While Bartolomeo the Elder was still linked to the legacy of the works of Michelangelo Cerquozzi, Giovanni Paolo therefore distinguished himself from his family members for a more lively, free and vibrant way of coloring, gaining, among the Castelli dynasty, the highest consensus as an excellent interpreter of the prevailing Baroque fervor. Giovanni Paolo Castelli died in Rome around 1730. The work object of this study fits well among the canvases clearly influenced by the berentziana investigation about the light reflections of glasses and crystals. The fruit bowl described has a perfect rendering of the transparency of the material, in which, in an apparent disorder, the fruits are carefully described, balanced in their chroma and shape, even where the apparent imbalance of the grapes that fall to the left, finds a contraposition with the fig branch. Similar compositions and similar glass bowls are often depicted in his paintings. Carlotta Venegoni
Period: Early 18th century