GALIZIA, Fede

Although Fede Galizia in her time was recognized and praised for her portraits and altarpieces, she is now mainly remembered as a still-life painter. She worked on a small scale and her paintings are executed with exquisite finesse on panel. Her naturalism was an inspiration to subsequent Italian still-life painters, most notably Panfilo Nuvolone, also from Milan.

The present still-life depicts cherries in a silver compote with crabapples on a stone ledge and a fritillary butterfly.

The biblical story of Judith made a deep impression on Galizia at an early age and she treated the subject many times, several versions are in private collections. In this version, the Jewish heroine is sumptuously dressed, laden with jewelry and her head crowned with a diadem. The preciosity of the heroine’s attire reflects the training in the miniature tradition the artist received from her father, Nunzio.

Fede Galizia, a woman painter in Milan, followed the example of Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit.

Formerly the painting was believed to be a self-portrait by Federico Zuccari. Evoking the work of Moroni, and visible in each of her earlier portraits, the painter’s sustained attention to pictorial truth is revealed by many elements. These include the virtuoso, realistic description of the heavy gold chains on the bust of the elderly painter, and the painstaking treatment of the profiles and the inscriptions on the medals. (The medals depict St Carlo Borromeo and Philip II.)

The sitter for this portrait is Paolo Morigia, a prominent figure in Milanese culture during the last decades of the sixteenth century. He was the general of the Congregazione dei Gesuati and author of numerous historical and erudite texts. He is portrayed at an advanced age, wearing the white habit of his order and surrounded by the conventional attributes of scholarly work.

This portrait impressed the Morigia so much that he became a devout supporter of Fede Galizia.

Documents show that the inscription at top is spurious.

This undated painting belongs to the artist’s earliest works. It is assumed that the sitter is Nunzio Galizia, the painter’s father.

The identity of the sitter is not known, however, the attribute of a skull, polished and shiny due to its handling by doctors, is sufficient to unequivocally identify the sitter’s profession. Typical of Milanese painting during the time of Cardinal Federico Borromeo, the conventional compositional approach, including the elegant pose and the subtle idealization that lends the sitter an expression of great dignity and nobility, sets this canvas apart from Galizia’s earliest known portraits, defined by a greater descriptive naturalism.

This dated and signed painting depicts a crystal fruit stand with peaches, quinces, and jasmine flowers. It is on loan from a private collection to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and it may be the prototype of a series of compositions, with slight variants. Several identical replicas of the painting are known in various private collections.

This painting is based on Fede Galizia’s successful prototype (now exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). It could be either a copy of the prototype, or a replica painted by the artist herself.

This painting is a variant of Fede Galizia’s successful prototype (now exhibited in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York). It depicts a fruit stand with peaches, quinces, jasmine flowers, and a locust.

This still-life is an exemplary illustration of Fede Galizia’s refined ability to render the natural world.