17th century, follower of Giuseppe Recco (Naples, 1634 - Alicante, 1695), Still life of fish, squid, oysters and corals on the beach

17th century, follower of Giuseppe Recco (Naples, 1634 - Alicante, 1695) Still life of fish, squid, oysters and corals on the beach Oil on canvas, 57.5 x 117 cm Framed, cm On the back of the canvas, a sealing wax seal and an early twentieth-century inventory label with the inscription "P.[or]ta / sc.[uola] Sorrento / lotto n.3 / [...] Recco". This canvas fully pursues the stylistic features of the seventeenth-century still life that had one of its capitals as a genre in Naples. Many are the names that distinguished themselves in this type of work, depicting flowers, fruits, musical instruments and animals, including fish, molluscs and crustaceans. In this sense, Giuseppe Recco was one of the cornerstones of the Neapolitan school, depicting various subjects in his production but with a particular predilection for marine still lifes, also taken up by his children Elena and Nicola Maria; a student of Paolo Porpora and son of the painter Giacomo, Recco conceived compositions that created a school within the Neapolitan pictorial panorama, managing however to distinguish himself especially for the representation of marine fauna, as critics and biographers attest, for the vivid rendering and brightness of the latter, which would have surpassed that of all those who had preceded him. This work fully reflects his style and his compositions: the scales of the fish reflecting the light, highlighted by a dark setting, the disorderly arrangement, the variety of species, including red mullet, barracuda, sea bass, glassy fish, red corals, greyish squid and oysters with dark shells. The opening onto the marine background does not contrast with the protagonists of the foreground and the cloudy sky, together with the dark earthy-colored rocks, recreates in a varied and airy form the completely dark and enclosed environments present in other representations. The tangency with Recco is found in many works of his production, especially with the canvas remembered at the Paolo Sapori Gallery in Spoleto; moreover, on the back of the work there is a sealing wax seal and an early twentieth-century inventory label with the inscription "P.[or]ta / sc.[uola] Sorrento / lotto n.3 / [...] Recco", which allows us to associate this canvas with absolute certainty with the workshop or with the followers of the artist who were active during the second half of the seventeenth century.