Lot 204
  • 204

Christian Berentz

Estimate
40,000 - 60,000 GBP
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Description

  • Christian Berentz
  • still life with a melon and a peach on a silver platter, together with a glass bowl of grapes and a tray of assorted glassware on a marble table top partly draped with a blue cloth
  • oil on canvas, unframed
  • 99 by 75 cm

Literature

G. De Logu, La Natura Morta Italiana, Bergamo 1962, pp. 115, 182, 189, reproduced fig. 114 (as Gabriele Salci);
L. Salerno, La natura morta italiana. 1560-1805, Rome 1984, p. 264, no. 72.1 (as by Salci);
L. Laureati and L. Trezzani, 'La natura morta postcaravaggesca a Roma', in La natura morta in Italia, ed. F. Zeri, Milan 1989, p. 844, reproduced fig. 1004 (as by Salci);
G. and U. Bocchi, Pittori di natura morta a Roma. Artisti stranieri, Viadana 2004, p. 305 (as by Berentz);
G. and U. Bocchi, Pittori di natura morta a Roma. Artisti italiani 1630-1750, Viadana 2005, pp. 712, 714, n.16 (as by Berentz).

Condition

The canvas has an old relining and the back of the stretcher has been covered with two pieces of board. Some of the painted canvas has been folded around the stretcher, thereby editing the space to the left of the arrangement. The relining has not overly flattened the paint surface, which retains its fine detail and some impasto. The paint surface is also clean, secure and in good condition, under a glossy varnish. No major damages are apparent to the naked eye. Inspection under UV light is impeded by the aforementioned varnish but does reveal retouchings along the left hand margin, and parts of the upper margin, presumably in response to some old frame abrasion. Some extensive retouching to the blue tablecloth is also revealed, but elsewhere the retouchings are scattered and small, with much of the central arrangement, including the leaves, grapes and intricate glass bases seeming to remain untouched. Offered unframed.
"In response to your inquiry, we are pleased to provide you with a general report of the condition of the property described above. Since we are not professional conservators or restorers, we urge you to consult with a restorer or conservator of your choice who will be better able to provide a detailed, professional report. Prospective buyers should inspect each lot to satisfy themselves as to condition and must understand that any statement made by Sotheby's is merely a subjective, qualified opinion. Prospective buyers should also refer to any Important Notices regarding this sale, which are printed in the Sale Catalogue.
NOTWITHSTANDING THIS REPORT OR ANY DISCUSSIONS CONCERNING A LOT, ALL LOTS ARE OFFERED AND SOLD AS IS" IN ACCORDANCE WITH THE CONDITIONS OF BUSINESS PRINTED IN THE SALE CATALOGUE."

Catalogue Note

Although long attributed to the Italian painter Gabriele Salci, Bocchi and Bocchi (see Literature) were the first to correctly associate this beautiful still life with the work of his German born contemporary Christian Berentz. The former attribution had no doubt arisen because of the numerous points of contact this work has with Salci's masterpiece of 1716, the Still Life with glass, parrot and violin which is also in the Liechtenstein princely collections at Vaduz1. The present still life may have entered the collections at the same date, but this is not known for certain.

Berentz was without question one of the leading foreign painters of still life practising in Rome in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries, and one of the few to be singled out for praise by Lione Pascoli in his Vite de'pittori, scultori e acrhitetti moderni published in 17362. A native of Hamburg, Berentz was in Rome by 1680, for two still lifes inscribed 'Roma' from that same year survive in the Kunsthalle in Hamburg. Here Berentz joined the Bent of Netherlandish painters, assuming the nickname of Gausblum  or 'Golden flower'. According to Pascoli he acquired the patronage of the Marchese Niccolò Maria Pallavicini, the patron of other foreign still life painters such as Karel Vogelaer and Franz Werner von Tamm. All three painters worked at the Palazzo Pallavicini with Carlo Maratta, and Berentz's finest works in this vein remain those of 1689 (Hermitage, Saint Petersburg) and 1696 (Naples, Museo Capodimonte)3. Each of these examples perfectly illustrates the principal fashionable components of Berentz's style: the realistic depiction of fruit, the opened watermelon, and above all the tray of meticulously depicted Murano glassware. In composition, however, the present work probably comes closest to a signed still life of 1691 (Hamburg, Kunsthalle), with their rather more old fashioned displays of fruit and glass set upon baroque tables draped with carpets, and this work probably dates from around the same time4.

 

1. For which see, for example, Salerno, op. cit., 1984, p. 264, fig. 72.2.
2. Di Cristiano Berentz 1730-1736, pp. 795-802.
3. Bocchi and Bocchi, op. cit., 2005, pp. 290-93, reproduced figs. CB.7 and CB.8.
4. Ibid., p. 299, fig. CB.12.