BONZI, Pietro Paolo

This depiction of fruit and vegetables signed by Pietro Paolo Bonzi is the pendant of another signed painting also once in the Wetzlar collection. The pendants are two of the artist’s three securely attributed still-lifes and as such form the cornerstone of our knowledge of Bonzi’s oeuvre in this area and a point of departure for any further enlargement of it. His only other documented still-life is the famous decoration with swags of fruit, flowers and vegetables painted in the vault of the gallery of the Palazzo Mattei in Rome, which was commissioned by Asdrubale Mattei and executed with Pietro da Cortona in 1622-23. In May 1626, Marchese Mattei also commissioned two paintings with assorted fruit and five ‘all different’ flower paintings from Bonzi. In Asdrubale’s 1638 posthumous inventory three paintings are listed as `birds by il Gobbo’. These and a few other documents attesting to his activity as a still-life painter reveal unequivocally that Bonzi was an artist who paid close attention to the natural world. His ability to render fruit in a naturalistic manner was transmitted directly to his only pupil named in the sources, Michelangelo Cerquozzi.

Works such as Bonzi’s Fruit, Vegetables and a Butterfly opened the path for Cerquozzi’s luxuriant and exuberant baroque still-life paintings. The artichokes, celery, pears, melon, slice of water melon, bunch of red strawberries, cherries, peaches, hazelnuts and figs on a stem, plus the two bunches of precariously piled white grapes, justify Giovanni Baglione’s statement that Bonzi, ‘with his fruit caught the eye and deceived the spectator’. Here Bonzi’s skill at optical illusion, his ability to outdo reality - the artichokes and figs would surely fall if gravity’s laws were obeyed - are sustained by his artistic talent.

During his lifetime Bonzi was particularly renowned for his still-lifes, but, like Filippo Napoletano, he was also active as a painter of landscapes. His output in this genre became entangled with that of Agostino Tassi, even though the two do not really have much in common. In addition to this canvas, Bonzi’s certain works include The Martyrdom of St Sebastian and The Rest of Hercules (both in the Pinacoteca Capitolina, Rome), Nymph and Faun (Galleria Nazionale d’Arte Antica di Palazzo Barberini, Rome) and Latona and the Frogs (Mus�e du Louvre, Paris).

Bonzi was clearly influenced by Annibale Carracci and to an even greater extent by Domenichino, but his compositions are more open on both sides and his terrain much flatter. His foregrounds spread out freely without obstacles such as large rocks or bushes, almost inviting the viewer to walk into the picture. His rather awkward figures tend to move parallel to the picture plane in a frieze-like procession. In the early 1620s he worked at the Palazzo Borghese on the Quirinal hill with Filippo Napoletano, each decorating different rooms. In this landscape Bonzi’s close attention to naturalistic detail suggests the influence of Bril. Establishing a chronology for Bonzi’s landscapes is almost impossible, but this work is perhaps not too far in date from the Pallavicini-Rospigliosi frescoes. The shepherds’ nakedness indicates that the scene is not contemporary (even though sheep-farming had largely replaced cultivation in the Roman campagna around this time), but rather an episode from Virgil’s Arcadia.

This small painting on copper was inspired by a drawing of Paul Bril, dated 1615.

A number of details indicate the artist’s Caravaggesque training in the workshop of Giovanni Battista Crescenzi (1577-1635): the insistence on the description of the large vine leaves, and the young boy (a servant whose left hand holds the other end of the vine branch that rings his head) disguised as Bacchus, as well as the lustrous bronze reflections on the copper container.