13
Elena Recco (Napoli, 1654 - Madrid, 1715)
Still life of fish, XVII century
oil painting on canvas
40 x 48 cm, framed 52 x 60 cm
Report by Prof. Strinati present.
"The Still Life of fish (oil on canvas, cm.37 x 47, in frame 50 x 62) is a work that falls well within the production of Elena Recco, a distinguished specialist painter of this genre, daughter of the great Neapolitan master Giuseppe Recco and active for a long time alongside her father (as well as her little-known brother Nicola Maria ) between Naples and the Royal Court of Spain to which she moved, precisely following her father, towards the end of the seventeenth century and where she remained for a long time, honored with very important and primary commissions.
"The Still Life of fish (oil on canvas, cm.37 x 47, in frame 50 x 62) is a work that falls well within the production of Elena Recco, a distinguished specialist painter of this genre, daughter of the great Neapolitan master Giuseppe Recco and active for a long time alongside her father (as well as her little-known brother Nicola Maria ) between Naples and the Royal Court of Spain to which she moved, precisely following her father, towards the end of the seventeenth century and where she remained for a long time, honored with very important and primary commissions.
Based on on the registry known and documented by the historiography of Recco (Naples 1654, Madrid 1715) the picture in question, from a stylistic and material point of view, appears to me to be certainly dated within the first decade of the eighteenth century, in the most mature phase of the production of the distinguished artist. I come to this consideration by comparing our work above all with some paintings from the ancient Orsini collection in Gravina di Puglia (today totally dispersed in various properties) which in fact included very remarkable still lifes of fish by Elena Recco, even though the inventories sometimes report them in mistake with the name of the great father Giuseppe.
I report in this regard as a school case, of great historical and artistic interest, a still life of fish, extremely close to ours, published by Lucio Galante, in La Natura Morta in Italia, second volume, Electa Milano 1989, p.971, n. 1183, with the name of Giuseppe Recco but in reality the absolute masterpiece of his daughter Elena.
Recco specialized extremely in the genre of fish painting, and our painting appears very significant for the author's typical and distinctive method of mixing the images of fish as if they had been thrown in disorder on the fishmonger's counter, waiting to be distributed to the various customers and patrons.
The pictorial material in our case is thick and full-bodied and this too is a peculiar element that characterizes the production of this large, painter who deserves a place of her own, and of absolute prominence, in the great and lofty history of Still Life in Naples between the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I conclude by noting the state of conservation of the painting under examination as very good and thus confirming its rather high intrinsic quality. I therefore estimate the painting in relation to the current international market conditions at a price of E. 18,000.00 (eighteen thousand).
Truthfully, Claudio Strinati"
€ 9.000,00
Starting price