Attributed to Agostino Verrocchio

Marchese Giuseppe Rondinini, by whom purchased in 1753 (according to the inscription on the reverse).

Oil on slate. This painting appears to be in lovely condition, with good retention of detail and coloration throughout. In the central painted bowl with stacked fruit there are a few discolored retouches which are under U.V. These retouches are minor in relation to the good retention of impasto and coloration throughout. U.V. also reveals a few small nicks in the background and adjacent to the central bowl. Painting is overall well preserved. In a carved octagonal giltwood frame that has some minor abrasions to the gilding.
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This excellently-preserved still life, with its slate support enhancing the luminosity of every detail, is entirely typical of Agostino Verrocchio's style. There is a clear uniformity in Agostino's work, and the same compositional techniques and iconographical motifs recur frequently. The present painting is closest compositionally to a set of four signed still lifes, also octagonal and on slate and with very similar dimensions (each 29 by 50 cm), in a private collection in Rome.¹  As in the present work, the stone ledge is sculpted with classical decoration, and many of the same still-life elements recur, such as the split pomegranate and melon, the wicker basket of apples and the celery sticks. A further stylistic comparison can be made between the delicate use of light effects to model the grapes in the present work and similar handling in another signed still life by Agostino in the Gasparrini Collection in Rome.²

Agostino Verrocchio's oeuvre was first defined by Raffaello Causa in his 1964 exhibition in Naples and was later supplemented by Mina Gregori in her 1973 article on the artist in Paragone.³  More recently, Gianluca and Ulisse Bocchi have unearthed more extensive biographical details for Agostino and their monographic article on the artist published in Pittori di natura morta a Roma in 2005 constitutes the most recent scholarship on the artist to date. Agostino's brother Giovanni Battista, and his son of the same name, were also still-life painters and they all collaborated in the family workshop in Rome. Federico Zeri asserted that the Verrocchio workshop had close personal and professional ties with Michelangelo Cerquozzi (1602-1660), a theory that has been endorsed by the Bocchis and is supported by the fact that Cerquozzi was chosen as the executor of Agostino's will, while his son Giovanni Battista was present as a witness to the drawing up and reading of Cequozzi's will.⁴

We are grateful to Professor John Spike for tentatively proposing the attribution to Agostino Verrocchio on the basis of photographs. We are also grateful to Dott. Alberto Crispo for independently noting the stylistic similarities between the present painting and the output of the Verrochio workshop. In particular, Dott. Crispo has pointed out that the present work may be by the same hand as two still lifes published by the Bocchis as by a "Maestro Verrochiesco", and which are now in the Sapori Collection in Spoleto.⁵ We can specifically compare in each painting the treatment of the melons and the branch of figs with one of the fruit ripped open.

A note on the Provenance:
Marchese Giuseppe Rondinini (1725-1801) acquired the family palazzo in the Corso in Rome in 1744 and subsequently added to his family's great collection of paintings and antique sculpture which had been acquired by his ancestors since the sixteenth century. The best-known acquisition by the Rondinini family was Michelangelo's Pietà which is now in the Castello Sforzesco in Milan.

1.  See Gianluca and Ulisse Bocchi, Pittori di natura morta a Roma, artisti italiani 1630-1750, Viadana 2005, p. 28, figs. AV.7-AV.10, reproduced.
2.  See Bocchi, op. cit., p. 25, fig. AV.1, reproduced in colour.
3.  R. Causa, La Natura Morta Italiana, exh. cat., Milan 1964, p. 40 & M. Gregori, "Notizie su Agostino Verrocchio e un'ipotesi per Giovan Battista Crescenzi", Paragone, XXIV, no. 275, pp. 35-56.
4.  Bocchi, op. cit., p. 20 and F. Zeri, La natura morta in Italia, Milan 1989, vol. II, p. 720.
5.  See Bocchi, op. cit., pp. 18 & 19, figs. FV.3 & FV.5, reproduced in colour.