Ludovico Soardi, attr. (Rimini, 1764 – post 1837), Pair of Still Lifes

Ludovico Soardi, attr. (Rimini, 1764 – post 1837)

Pair of Still Lifes

Oil on oil, 112 x 153 cm – with frame, 133 x 170 cm

The two still lifes presented here, attributed to Ludovico Soardi (Rimini, 1764 – post 1837), fit with particular interest into the still fragmentary framework of Romagna production between the end of the eighteenth century and the first decades of the nineteenth century, a context in which still life does not constitute a structured tradition but rather a genre practiced episodically by individual personalities. In this context, the figures of Nicola Levoli and Carlo Magini emerge, to whom Soardi seems to look, reinterpreting their models in a more up-to-date and academic way. The first canvas, Still Life with Fish, Game and Vegetables, takes place in a dark environment, constructed through a compact brown background that absorbs the light and allows the objects to emerge thanks to a grazing lighting, coming from outside in a diagonal direction. On a barely perceptible table are arranged silvery fish, a bird, and two baskets full of vegetables. The composition is calibrated according to a studied balance: the basket on the right, taller and richer in elements, balances the more compact volume of the terracotta one placed on the left, while the fish and game create a horizontal line that stabilizes the whole. The attention to the tactile rendering of the surfaces – the shiny scales, the soft feathers, the wicker weave – reveals a thin and smooth application, devoid of the material ripples that characterize Levoli's painting, suggesting a more controlled and academic approach. The second canvas, Still Life with a Vase of Flowers, Walnuts, Mortar, Plucked Turkey and Salmon, broadens the iconographic register by introducing a more complex setting. The table is placed in front of a wooden plate rack and a wall on which metal dishes hang, elements that structure the space and give perspective depth. In the foreground, a bronze vase holds pink-toned roses and buds, next to a stone mortar and pestle and scattered walnuts, while a plucked bird, tied with string, lies next to a salmon fillet placed on a plate placed over a copper container. The compositional order, far from being random, manifests an academic awareness in the arrangement of the objects, which are organised according to a carefully considered volumetric progression. The comparison with the three canvases preserved at the Stefano Bardini Museum in Florence, already attributed to Nicola Levoli and characterised by the presence of fish, plucked turkeys and mortars, is compelling from an iconographic point of view. However, in the works examined here one can perceive a different quality of the pictorial material, smoother and more compact, and a greater clarity in the spatial construction, elements that allow us to hypothesize the hand of Soardi. His activity, documented at least since 1787 and attested at the exhibitions of the Academy of Fine Arts of Ravenna in 1835 and 1837, finds an initial firm point in the eight canvases from a private collection in Fano, one of which is signed and dated 1810, from which emerges a language consistent with that of the works under examination. In the absence of a consolidated local tradition, Soardi therefore seems to interpret the lesson of Levoli and Magini through an updated filter, characterized by a more modern taste in the rendering of light and by a compositional discipline of academic origin. The two canvases thus constitute significant testimonies to a Romagna-style interpretation of still life, capable of combining descriptive naturalism with a search for formal balance and executive finesse.

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