RECCO, Giuseppe

Giuseppe Recco had a very extensive high-quality production, characterized by marked cultural eclecticism ranging from the Spanish still-life genre to those of Northern Europe and Rome, and by uncommon iconographic versatility. After kitchen still-lifes, compositions with fish and shellfish, bouquets and underbrush paintings, assemblies of fruit and game, tables laid with food and sweets, and vanitas paintings, in the 1670s he tried his hand at a distinctive, extremely original and sophisticated genre: displays of archeological findings, ceramics, earthenware and, above all, glassware and crystal. The canvas in Warsaw is one of the finest examples of the latter genre.

Displayed on a beveled grey marble table is a collection of valuable Murano, Catalonian and “fa�on de Venise” glassware in different shapes and sizes. The delicate goblets, cups, vases, cruets and fruit stands are portrayed with lucid realism and impeccable accuracy.

The painting depicts a kitchen interior with copper ware, octopus, and onions on a stone ledge. Giuseppe Recco executed several paintings depicting kitchen interiors in the 1660s and 1670s.

Giuseppe Recco depicted the kitchen corner with all the foodstuffs that could also be found in the average larder. He composed this painting with the same bravura that was used by his Neapolitan colleagues in their religious history paintings.

The artist depicts in this still-life slices of watermelon on a pewter tray, with mushrooms and fruit.

The work conforms to the characteristics of Recco’s oeuvre.

This painting is one of a pair, both depicting a still-life of flowers in elaborate urn on a ledge.

This painting is one of a pair, both depicting a still-life of flowers in elaborate urn on a ledge.

Recco was the leading still-life expert in Naples in the mid 1600s, but his exact dates are unknown as he disappeared from records soon after his first dated still-life appeared in 1653. Many Neapolitan artists died from the plague in 1656, and Recco’s last bank payment was received that year, so he may have been one of them.

Giuseppe Recco was one of the most famed Neapolitan still-life painter of his time. The present picture is an early example of the painter’s achievements in kitchen scenes, which he favoured throughout his first period of artistic maturity.

The painting is signed with initials centre right G.R.

Giovan Battista Recco, along with Luca Forte and the little-known Giacomo Coppola, was one of the leading representatives of the first generation of Neapolitan still-life painters.

This painting shows two characteristic elements of the iconographic repertory of Recco: the hand-beaten copper cauldron filled with water that glistens in the light, and the large fish strung by its gills on the cord tied to the jutting nail. The oblique light shattering the dark interior from above is a Caravaggesque solution.

Giuseppe Recco came from a family of painters that specialised in still-lifes. He started painting in the tradition of his father Giacomo and his uncle Giovanni Battista who still cultivated the close-up assemblages of objects, presented on a table. Giuseppe developed his bravura style in still-lifes of fish, later he turned increasingly to the decorative Baroque flower piece.

This monumental still-life, placed in a landscape with rich vegetation, is a late work of the artist.

Suggested listening (streaming mp3, 7 minutes):

Piotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky: The Nutcracker, ballet suite, op. 71, Waltz of the Flowers

This painting was formerly attributed to Giuseppe Recco, the father of Giovan Battista Recco.

The main preoccupation of the Neapolitan still-life painters of the second half of the seventeenth century was not to create a perfect and deceptive representation of textures and surfaces, which was the aim of the northern Italian painters, or to an even greater extent, the Dutch masters of still-life. The Neapolitan artists focused on decorative effect expressed through pictorial composition. This intention is reflected in a virtuoso style of painting that seeks to be recognised and esteemed as such.