Still life with festoon of flowers and fruit, Aniello Ascione (Naples, news from 1680 to 1708)

Aniello Ascione
(Naples, news from 1680 to 1708)

Still life with garland of flowers and fruit

Oil painting on canvas,
89 x 117 cm – in frame 104 x 132 cm.

With expertise and attributive study by Prof. Stefano Causa (University of Naples)
D21-033 € 14.900 request information

” This composition of fruit with a festoon of flowers belongs to the brush of Aniello Ascione and is a notable addition to the endgame of the Neapolitan still life – the most baroque and decorative one imaginable. The naturalistic, still Caravaggesque, impetus of the early 6s specialists, from Luca Forte to Porpora, now seems like a distant memory.

The name of Ascione also comes from the comparison with the still life signed by the Civic Museum of Castello Ursini in Catania, compared to which the painting in question qualifies as a sixteenth version. It is not uncommon, moreover, for easily repeatable patterns to recur in the workshops of still life painters. The melon on the right, the run of flowers and, in the background, the profile of a column or a fountain. We could compare them to the normalized formal types used by great southern composers such as Alessandro or Domenico Scarlatti (with whom, moreover, we find ourselves more or less at the same time as our painting).

Set on a diagonal cut, our painting connects to the Neapolitan climate split between Giordano and Francesco Solimena (also in its connections with the contemporary Roman scene of a Michelangelo da Campidoglio and a Spadino). These are the years in which the still life rises, so to speak, to its maximum presentation volume. But let's not anticipate any further and get closer.

We are faced with a complex work conceived for amateurs willing to slowly make their way with their gaze (and smell) among fruit and flowers. Every single element of the composition is weighed in its individuality and conceived in relation to a large whole. The reading of the painting is triggered by the melon on the right with the jagged peel (a mark of the Ruoppolos and a badge of belonging).

Immediately to the side, a carpet of half-opened figs and leaves occupies the foreground of the canvas.

The solution of calibrating the fruits diagonally enlivens the composition by increasing its depth. The shadowy, almost earthy quality of the surface is extolled in the almost obscenely open pomegranate with the seeds dotted with light; moving forward to the right, the fireworks of the bunch of grapes explode (of that particular species which, in the South, is called cornicella grape).

The spectacle of the painting could also end here if, in the center of the page, similar to a versicolor hammock, the festoon did not impose itself as a coup de theater and as one of the beautiful finds of the final season of still life. To use an overused metaphor, these paintings are a feast for the eyes. On the right, in the background, a piece of architecture with a fountain peeks out, by way of homage, which Giordano himself would not have rendered with any different enthusiasm.
[…] ”

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:

The work sold is completed by a pleasant golden frame and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and guarantee.

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