Description:
Still life depicting "Stone shelf with apples", oil on canvas by Luca Forte (Naples 1605 approx.- 1670 approx.). Unpublished painting, never studied until today, undoubtedly attributed to Luca Forte by Nicola Spinosa.
The stylistic affinities with other paintings, assigned or signed by him, are remarkable, and in particular with the pair of octagonal canvases (same format) belonging to the collections of the Museo di Capodimonte.
Active, presumably between 1625/65, he can be considered the most important, as well as the first, of the painters who in Naples, in the first fifty years of the seventeenth century, devoted themselves to the genre of still life. He was influenced, especially in the early period, by Caravaggio. His paintings from the first half of the seventeenth century, including ours, are compositions with a dark background, where the force of light investigates the elements in the foreground and transfigures nature. The fruits take on a solid, sometimes almost stony, material consistency, without doubt the Caravaggesque lesson, of fresh memory, is still very present.
The painting, in excellent condition, dates back to the years immediately after 1630 and is accompanied by an expert opinion by Professor Nicola Spinosa. It is inserted in a beautiful octagonal frame, not antique, but of excellent craftsmanship.
Canvas measures 30x43 with frame 45.5x58
