Paolo Paoletti (Padua, around 1671 - Udine, 1735), Still life with vegetables, fruit and mushrooms

Paolo Paoletti (Padua, around 1671 - Udine, 1735) Still life with vegetables, fruit and mushrooms Oil on canvas, 76 x 106 cm With frame, 87 x 117 cm Critical Essay by Prof. Alberto Crispo The unpublished painting illustrated here depicts vegetables, mushrooms, fruit and flowers on sloping stone planks; in particular, we note cardoons, celery, curly lettuce, cucumbers, caesar's mushrooms, apples, almonds and different floral varieties. The still life is a typical work by Paolo Paoletti (Padua circa 1671 - Udine 1735), as revealed by comparisons with other works by the artist: see in particular a painting formerly in the collections of the Counts Thun, recently acquired by the Autonomous Province of Trento, in which we find the large cardoon around which the entire composition revolves. The same reappears in other examples by our painter, such as a still life that was previously on the Roman antiques market, wrongly attributed to Agostino Verrocchi by Federico Zeri (Fototeca Zeri, card n. 63568), where we also see, very similar, the caesar's mushrooms, curly lettuce and cucumbers. The mushrooms are then reused in a large canvas that appeared on July 8, 2010 at Sotheby's in London, lot 188, with an absurd reference to the circle of Giuseppe Vicenzino, which also depicts flowers perfectly consistent with those outlined in our painting. In conclusion, we can point out that curly lettuce and celery reappear, in completely similar forms, among the elements of a still life that appeared more than ten years ago on the English market (Christie's South Kensington, July 11, 2008, lot 97, as the circle of Abraham Brueghel). Unlike other specialists in this pictorial genre, our artist was already remembered by art historians of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, including Luigi Lanzi, according to whom "He was particularly distinguished in flowers, and also portrayed fruits, vegetables, fish, game with much truth" (L. Lanzi, Pictorial History of Italy..., III, Florence 1823, pp. 241-242). He was also one of the first still life painters to whom a monograph was dedicated (T. Miotti, The Still Lifes of Paolo Paoletti, Udine 1968) and thanks to more recent studies further information has been added on his life and artistic career (in this regard, see at least G. Bocchi, Paolo Paoletti "industrious emulator of Nature", in Pictures of Flowers and Fruits. Still Life Paintings in Castel Thun and in the Trentino Museums, exhibition catalog, edited by E. Mich, Trento 2009, pp. 75-83; A. Craievich, A Venetian Trace for Paolo Paoletti, in Commitment and Knowledge. Studies in Art History in honor of Egidio Martini, edited by F. Pedrocco, Verona 2009, pp. 226-231). We therefore know that he was born in Padua around 1671, given that the death certificate of 1735 says he was about sixty-four years old, and that he moved to Udine very early, not yet twenty years old. We also have news of a stay in Venice, having been registered with the local Fraglia of painters from 1708 to 1715, even if already by the latter date it was "out" and since 1712 he had been exempted from paying the relative tax, perhaps because he no longer resided in the city. It is therefore probable that at forty years of age he returned to Udine, where he was protected by Count Leonardo Caiselli, who hosted him in his palace in the San Cristoforo district, and painted still lifes for his patron and for other clients, as Lanzi still reports: "The family that hosted him has an entire room of these delights; and many others own them in other houses inside and outside Friuli" (L. Lanzi, Pictorial History... cit., p. 315). His paintings could be found in Palazzo Giacomelli, in Palazzo de' Concina, in the villa d'Attimis Maniago of Buttrio, in the residence of the Counts Florio, in villa Canciani in Varmo and in the Valentinis castle in Tricesimo, while other works were in the Wram collection of Gorizia and in the castle of the Counts Zoppola near Pordenone. Paoletti died in Udine in 1735, as confirmed by the documents kept at the archive of the church of San Cristoforo.