Lot 50: Carlo Magini (Fano 1720-1806)

A glass bottle, a blue and white porcelain platter, a copper coffee pot, a flask, a covered jar, a tumbler of wine, a knife, bread, onions and an orange on a partially-draped table, with a ham and pans suspended from the wall
oil on canvas
30 1/4 x 23 in. (76.9 x 58.4 cm.)

Anonymous sale [The property of a gentleman]; Christie's, London, 13 December 1991, lot 95.

A native of Fano, Carlo Magini was completely forgotten until signed still lifes by him were published in 1954. He has since been recognised as one of the greatest Italian still-life painters of the eighteenth century. A pupil of his uncle, Sebastiano Ceccarini, by whom no still lifes are known, Magini's stylistic formation has not been satisfactorily explained. A contemporary of Melendez and only a generation younger than Chardin, he shares with them a love of the simple forms of humble, everyday objects. His oeuvre consists entirely of kitchen still lifes, but within this limitation the intensity of his vision creates endless variety in the arrangement of the objects and the play of light upon them. As Professor Luigi Salerno wrote: 'In Magini's works one finds a simplicity that achieves an objective rendering of the model with the same detatchment of feeling that the camera has toward the image before it. The poetry of his art is entrusted precisely to this extreme simplicity, to this apparent stripping away of all subjective participation' (L. Salerno, Nuovi Studi su la Natura Morta in Italia, Rome, 1989, p. 164).

Three particularly closely related still lifes, of identical size to the present picture, are in the Museum at Morshansk (V.E. Markov, Pictures of Italian Masters XIV-XVIII Centuries in Museums of the USSR, 1986, pp. 232-7, nos. 94-6) and another is in the collection of the Cassa di Risparmio of Fano (La natura morta in Italia, ed. F. Zeri, Milan, 1989, II, p. 643, fig. 759). In all of these the foreground ledge recedes slightly to the right, a frequent feature of Magini's work also evident in the present picture.

No VAT will be charged on the hammer price, but VAT at 17.5% will be added to the buyer's premium, which is invoiced on a VAT inclusive basis.