Attributed to Joseph Heintz the Younger Augsburg circa 1600 - 1678 Venice

This pair of paintings represents a fascinating continuation of  the late mannerist traditions of market and larder still lifes, as exemplified in central and northern Europe by the work of Maerten and Lucas van  Valckenborch or Jeremias van Winghe in Frankfurt, and in northern Italy by artists such as Vincenzo Campi in Cremona. Heintz himself was born in Augsburg around 1600, the son and pupil of the Prague painter Joseph Heintz the Elder. His career was, however, largely spent in Italy, notably in Venice and Rome, where in 1644 Pope Urban VIII made him a Knight of the Golden Spur. Although he is far better remembered for his Venetian capricci, he is known to have turned his hand to genre paintings. The present paintings may be compared, for example, to his equally large canvas of a Fish Seller in the Bloch collection in Rome, which is signed and indistinctly dated from the 1650s (exhibited in Naples, Palazzo Reale, Zurich and Rotterdam, La Natura morta italiana, October - November 1964, no. 259). The handling of the fish elements in particular would suggest that the artist had also seen Italian examples of this genre, such as the works of his contemporary Giovanni Battista Recco in Naples.