Aniello Ascione (Naples, documented from 1680 to 1708)
Still life with festoon of flowers and fruit
Oil on canvas (89 x 117 cm - framed 104 x 132 cm)
With expertise and attribution study by Prof. Stefano Causa (University of Naples)
Full details (click on the LINK)
''This composition of fruit with a festoon of flowers belongs to the brush of Aniello Ascione and is a significant addition to the final part of Neapolitan still life - the most baroque and decorative imaginable. The naturalistic impetus, still Caravaggesque, of the specialists of the early 17th century, from Luca Forte to Porpora, now seems a distant memory.
The name of Ascione is also reached by comparing it with the signed Still Life of the Museo Civico di Castello Ursini in Catania, compared to which the painting in question qualifies as a sixteenth version. It is not uncommon, moreover, for easily repeatable schemes to recur in the workshops of still life painters. The melon on the right, the pursuit of flowers and, in the background, the profile of a column or a fountain. We could compare them to the normalized formal types used by great southern composers such as Alessandro or Domenico Scarlatti (with whom, moreover, we find ourselves more or less at the same time as our painting).
Set on a diagonal cut, our painting connects to the Neapolitan climate split between Giordano and Francesco Solimena (also in its connections with the contemporary Roman scene of a Michelangelo from Campidoglio and a Spadino). These are the years in which still life rises, so to speak, to the maximum volume of presentation. But let's not anticipate further and get closer.
We are faced with a complex work conceived for amateurs willing to slowly make their way with their gaze (and with their sense of smell) among fruits and flowers. Each single element of the composition is weighed in its individuality and conceived in relation to a large ensemble. The reading of the painting is triggered by the melon on the right with the jagged rind (a hallmark of the Ruoppolo and a badge of belonging).
Immediately to the side, a carpet of half-open figs and leaves occupies the foreground of the canvas.
The solution of calibrating the fruits diagonally revives the composition, increasing its depth. The shadowy, almost earthy quality of the surface settles into the almost obscenely open pomegranate with light-studded seeds; moving to the right, the fireworks of the bunch of grapes explode (of that particular species which, in the South, is called cornicella grapes).
The spectacle of the painting could also end here if, in the center of the page, similar to a multicolored hammock, the festoon did not impose itself as a theatrical coup and as one of the beautiful finds of the final season of still life. To use a very abused metaphor, these paintings are a feast for the eyes. On the right, in the background, a piece of architecture with a fountain peeps out as a homage, which Giordano himself would not have rendered with different fervor.
[...] ''
ADDITIONAL INFORMATION:
The work sold is completed by a pleasant gilded frame and is accompanied by a certificate of authenticity and guarantee.
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