Elena Recco (XVII-XVIII), Still life of fish
for sale
- Period : 18th century
- Style : Ancient times
- Height : 55cm
- Width : 95cm
- Material : Oil on canvas
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Detailed Description
Elena Recco (Active between the end of the 17th and the beginning of the 18th century)
Still life of fish
Oil on canvas, 55 x 95 cm - with frame 66 x 106 cm
Daughter and pupil of Giuseppe, Elena Recco successfully ventured into still life, tracing paternal themes and especially preferring marine iconography. Of his career there is no precise information, Bernardo de 'Dominici (1683-1759) in his "Lives of Neapolitan painters, sculptors, and architects" (III, Naples 1742-44, pag. 297), in appendix to the life of Giuseppe Recco, provides some data. The biographer mentions Elena's transfer to Spain and her presence in Madrid in 1695, following the Countess of Santo Stefano, who moved at the end of her husband's appointment as Viceroy of Naples. We do not know how long her stay in the Spanish capital lasted, but there she executed some works, as documented in a 1794 inventory of the Palazzo del Buen Retiro, where some floral paintings referring to her are mentioned.
The painting analyzed here constitutes an interesting testimony to be placed side by side with the best and typical production made by Elena Recco, as underlined in the book Nature morte del seventeenth and eighteenth century (Edited by Patrizia Consigli Valente, Parma, 1987, pp. 10-11) . The foreground arrangement of fish, through abundant construction, is found in some of his happiest essays. In the composition under analysis, the distinctive characteristics of Recco's production are fully found: the support surface contains the fish on display, immersed in a muted but diffused light coming from the landscape behind. The fish in the foreground have the peculiar characteristics of his works: the particular pink, green and blue-gray hues of the scales, combined with a sparkling vitality of the prey just caught, which shine with silver reflections, denouncing their vitality, expressed by the brightness of the eyes, large and open, and of the contortions of the bodies. To balance the composition there is a copper container in the upper part, which adapts to the marine composition with its rounded shape. Many beautiful and sweet figures of the chicks, which also return in other works of his.
Still life of fish
Oil on canvas, 55 x 95 cm - with frame 66 x 106 cm
Daughter and pupil of Giuseppe, Elena Recco successfully ventured into still life, tracing paternal themes and especially preferring marine iconography. Of his career there is no precise information, Bernardo de 'Dominici (1683-1759) in his "Lives of Neapolitan painters, sculptors, and architects" (III, Naples 1742-44, pag. 297), in appendix to the life of Giuseppe Recco, provides some data. The biographer mentions Elena's transfer to Spain and her presence in Madrid in 1695, following the Countess of Santo Stefano, who moved at the end of her husband's appointment as Viceroy of Naples. We do not know how long her stay in the Spanish capital lasted, but there she executed some works, as documented in a 1794 inventory of the Palazzo del Buen Retiro, where some floral paintings referring to her are mentioned.
The painting analyzed here constitutes an interesting testimony to be placed side by side with the best and typical production made by Elena Recco, as underlined in the book Nature morte del seventeenth and eighteenth century (Edited by Patrizia Consigli Valente, Parma, 1987, pp. 10-11) . The foreground arrangement of fish, through abundant construction, is found in some of his happiest essays. In the composition under analysis, the distinctive characteristics of Recco's production are fully found: the support surface contains the fish on display, immersed in a muted but diffused light coming from the landscape behind. The fish in the foreground have the peculiar characteristics of his works: the particular pink, green and blue-gray hues of the scales, combined with a sparkling vitality of the prey just caught, which shine with silver reflections, denouncing their vitality, expressed by the brightness of the eyes, large and open, and of the contortions of the bodies. To balance the composition there is a copper container in the upper part, which adapts to the marine composition with its rounded shape. Many beautiful and sweet figures of the chicks, which also return in other works of his.
