Giuseppe Maria Crespi

Crespi collection, Milan, from whom acquired by a French collector in the late 19^th Century, as "Bolognese School."

Bologna, Palazzi del Podesta e di Re Enzo, L'Arte del Settecento Emiliano. La pittura. L'Accademia Clementina, 1979, no. 330, reproduced no. 176;
Bologna, Pinacoteca Nazionale e Accademia di Belle Arti, Giuseppe Maria Crespi 1665-1747, 7 September -11 November 1990, no. 57.

M. Pajes Merriman, Giuseppe Maria Crespi, Milan, 1980, p. 319, cat. no. 300, reproduced fig. 300;
L. Salerno, La natura morta italiana, Rome 1984, p. 351;
A. Colombi Ferretti, in La Natura Morta in Italia, Milan 1989, vol. I, pp. 443, 478, reproduced p. 481, fig. 573.

Painting has been glue relined and surface is slightly dirty. The paint surface has been slightly pressed, but brushwork still reads beautifully. There is some breakdown in the brown glazes in the background, but the birds have been very well preserved. In the background, particularly at the right side of the picture where the background was more thinly painted, there are restorations dotted here and there to cover thinnesses or losses in the paint surface. This picture appears to have not been touched in a long time and certainly an updated restoration would be beneficial. Nevertheless, it still presents a strong and compelling image. In an old ornately carved and gilt wood frame (possibly from the period).
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A master and innovator in all genres of painting, Giuseppe Maria Crespi was recorded by contemporary sources as having been from early in his career an adept painter of still lifes.  He exhibited, for example, a Butcher's Shop in 1688 (a picture which must have recalled Annibale Carracci's treatment of the subject some century earlier), and as early as 1697 a set of three canvases depicting fish still lifes attributed to him were recorded in the collection of Cardinal Corsi in Rome.¹  However, only a small group of still lifes may be definitively given to him today; Merriman lists only six such pictures (including the present example) which, given Crespi's inventive and prolific nature, can represent only a small fraction of what he produced.²  Indeed, the variety in even just the extant pictures and ones described that can firmly be attributed to him suggest the range of his output in the genre.  There is a group of game still lives (of which the present is perhaps most unusual) as well as a trompe l'oeil still life of books on shelves (Bologna, Conservatorio Martini) and a "portrait" study of an Aloe Plant, in the botanical manner of Bartolomeo Bimbi (private collection).

This Still Life of Game Birds, therefore, is a key work in the understanding of the restricted corpus of Crespi's still life painting.  An earlier Game Still Life now in the Uffizi, Florence, can be dated by documentary evidence to 1708, painted for Archduke Ferdinando de' Medici during Crespi's visit to Florence, and the Aloe Plant is inscribed with the date of 1718.³  However, when the present painting was restored in the early 1970's, later relining canvases were removed to reveal the inscription GIUSEPPE CRESPI F.1717.  If this inscription can be regarded as a signature, and it almost certainly must be regarded as such, this painting is the unique signed and dated known still life by the artist. Its direct approach is entirely within Crespi's own artistic temperament, although it seems to have found some inspiration-- as in other paintings by the artist-- in the work of northern painters.  Ferretti notes an interesting parallel between the present canvas and a Still Life of Game Birds by Abraham Breughel in a Bolognese private collection.⁴

The Still Life of Game Birds further clarifies the body of Crespi's still life painting in comparison with a set of three still lifes, two in the collection of the Cassa di Risparmio, Bologna, and one in a private collection.⁵  These three canvases are all hunt still lifes and share with the present canvas a general sensibility and subject matter, and have been in the past attributed to the artist himself.  However, Merriman and other scholars (such as Ferretti, see literature) have rejected the inclusion of these paintings in Crespi's work, noting that the handling and compositional structure are markedly different.⁶  These pictures have since been tentatively attributed to a northern artist, possibly Pieter Boel.⁷  The present Still Life of Game Birds, however, demonstrates all of "the simplicity of ... composition and effective use of touches of color as color (the yellow on the breast of the small bird and the red of the feet and beak of the one hanging), as well as the velvety quality of the shadows [that] are characteristics seen in Crespi's best preserved works."⁸  It clearly demonstrates, that in his still lifes, as in his genre pictures, Crespi anticipated the quiet beauty of the paintings of Chardin.

 

1.  Among the effects noted in the palazzo in via Giulia belonging to Cardinal Domenico Maria Corsi at the time of his death are listed Tre altri quadri con frutti di mare distesi in largo palmi tre l'uno, e alti due, e mezzo con cornici grandi, ondate, tinte nere, e con battente dorato, dissesi esser tutti tre di mano dello Spagniolo.
2.  It should be noted that of these six pictures, Merriman considered two of the game still lifes formerly in the Battistelli collection, Florence as tentative attributions, based only on old photographs.
3.  This fascinating picture demonstrates the participation of Crespi and his circle in the pan-European interest in scientific matters.  The painting depicts the rare blooming of an African aloe plant (Aloe Mucronata) belonging to Crespi's friend Filippo Benacci.
4.  See Ferretti, op. cit. p. 478. reproduced., p. 442, fig. 531.
5.  See Francesco Arcangeli, 'Nature morte di Giuseppe Maria Crespi', in Paragone, iii/25 (1952), pp. 20–32, and again in Natura ed espressione nell'arte bolognese-emiliana, exhibition catalogue, Bologna 1970, cat. no. 78.
6.  See Merriman op. cit, pp. 329-330.
7.  See P. Rosenberg, "Acquisitions de tableaux italiens des XVII et XVIII siècles, in La Revue du Louvre, XXII, p. 112.
8.  Merriman op. cit. p. 319.