Bartolomeo Castelli known as Bartolomeo Spadino the Younger, pair of still lifes, oil on canvas.
The paintings are accompanied by the authentication of Dr. Gianluca Bocchi.
“Still life with grapes, apple, plum and two peaches placed on the ground”, oil on canvas cm H 35.5 x L 46.
“Still life with grapes and apples placed on the ground”, oil on canvas cm H 35.5 x W 46.
Bartolomeo Castelli the Younger (Rome 1696 – 1738), also known as Spadino for having derived the pseudonym of his father Giovanni Paolo, is the youngest member of a family of Roman artists dedicated to the representation of still lifes of fruit.
The pictorial imprint found in his works does not seem to seek the Baroque inspiration visible in his father’s canvases, more based on chromatic strength and the search for decorativeness, preferring to resume and successfully update the models of the homonymous uncle, called Bartolomeo for this reason Castelli the Elder.
In one of these two small canvases there is a trace on the original frame of an inscription in eighteenth-century characters which can be distinguished with the word “Spadino”. The identity of the writing, found on paintings with different origins, but characterized by the same style and the same subjects, confirms the originality of the signature that the author loved to affix on the back of his compositions, vaulted on the canvases or on the frames.
The pair of canvases certainly belonged to a larger series that was dispersed or perhaps split up in the course of hereditary transmissions.
The author had a predilection for small dimensions, where he knew how to best express his qualities as a fine investigator of nature, revisiting Campidogliesque modules learned with the study of his uncle’s compositions, probably through the drawings and cartoons left by Bartolomeo the Elder in family.
Period: 1720s / 1730s
Measurements: H 35.5 x W 46 x D 3,5 cm
