An exhibition exploring the evolution of Caravaggio's still life painting opened at Rome's Borghese Gallery on Wednesday.
The show titled 'The Origin of the Still Life in Italy - Caravaggio and the Master of Hartford' includes such masterpieces as the 'Basket of Fruit', on loan from the Pinacoteca Ambrosiana in Milan, as well as the 'Young Sick Bacchus' and the 'Boy with a Basket of Fruit' from the Borghese Gallery collection itself.
A total of 40 artworks are on display until February 19, including works by the so-called Master of Hartford, a mysterious young painter believed by some art historians, including Federico Zeri, to have been Caravaggio himself.
The exhibition begins by looking at the tradition of naturalism in Caravaggio's native Lombardy, represented by Vincenzo Campi, Giuseppe Arcimboldo and Giovanni Antonio Figino. The latter is credited with painting the first-ever still life in Italy: 'Metal Plate with Peaches and Vine Leaves' (1590-1594).
The curators juxtaposed Caravaggio's the 'Young Sick Bacchus' and the 'Boy with a Basket of Fruit' and the four paintings unearthed by Zeri from the Scipione Borghese collection in the 1970s and attributed to the 'Hartford master' in order to play up the contrast between the two styles: "drier and more wooden" for the unknown painter, and full of the poetry of naturalism for Caravaggio.
The Hartford master was the first painter to devote himself entirely to still life, while Caravaggio used the genre to bring about his very personal painting revolution. The exhibition also explores the work of numerous masters who followed in Caravaggio's footsteps and devoted part of their output to still life.
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