Lot 58: Carlo Magini (Fano 1720-1806)

A glass bottle, a blue and white porcelain platter, an earthenware jug, a candle, an orange and fennel on a wooden ledge with meat on a chopping board; and A candlestick, an earthenware jar, a porcelain bowl, a basket and tablecloth, and bottles on a wooden ledge with beans and fruit
oil on canvas
21 7/8 x 32 1/8 in. (55.6 x 83.7 cm.)
a pair (2)

Tokyo, Seiji Togo Memorial Museum of Art, Italian still life painting, from the Silvano Lodi collection, 28 April-26 May 2001, nos. 36-7; and on tour in Japan.
Ravensburg, Schloss Achberg, Natura morta italiana: Italienische stilleben aus vier Jahrhunderten, sammlung Silvano Lodi, 11 April-12 October, 2003.

Italian still life painting, from the Silvano Lodi collection, exhibition catalogue, Tokyo, 2001, pp. 75-6.
S. Dathe, Natura morta italiana: Italienische stilleben aus vier Jahrhunderten, sammlung Silvano Lodi, exhibition catalogue, Ravensburg, 2003, pp. 14 and 60.

Carlo Magini was the nephew and apprentice of Sebastiano Ceccarini, a distinguished portrait painter in Roman society. Between 1738 and 1743, Magini lived in Rome, assisting both Ceccarini and Francesco Mancini, a future principe of the Academy of St. Luke. After these exceptional experiences, Magini returned to Fano, a small port town on the Adriatic coast between Venice and Ancona. There he lived and worked, painting portraits of the local citizenry. Soon after his death in 1808, his name was forgotten, even in Fano.

His true life's work passed unnoticed by his contemporaries. In the quiet of his studio, Magini concentrated his gifts on the extraordinary still lifes, almost a hundred in all, that sparked his rediscovery. The landmark exhibition of Italian baroque paintings in Florence in 1922 included three of Magini's still lifes then attributed to Paolo Antonio Barbieri. These 'solid and atmospheric paintings,' as the catalogue describes them, were thought to date from the seventeenth century. G.J. Hoogewerff, a leading expert, saw a meditative realism worthy of the Spanish old masters. There the matter stood for thirty years until Charles Sterling's pivotal study of 1952, Still Life Painting from Antiquity to the Twentieth Century. Praising the mysterious pictures' 'almost Caravaggesque spirit of severity', Sterling recognised their north Italian origins. 'True,' replied Roberto Longhi a year later, for Longhi had found a still life inscribed by Carlo Magini, 'painter of Fano'. Italy's foremost still life specialist of the eighteenth century now had a name.

Numerous studies of the 1950s and 1960s brought more works to light. Gradually it emerged that Magini had methodically constructed an oeuvre with all the hallmarks of a series. Comparisons to Giorgio Morandi, the twentieth-century master of Bologna, a city not far from Fano, are a recurrent theme in Magini scholarship. Both artists focused their vision on the limitless possibilities of a single theme. Morandi's miniature ceramic bottles are the north Italian heirs of Magini's simple table set with the makings of a meal.

The motifs in Magini's still lifes have the familiarity of old friends. For example, the green bottles stopped with a piece of paper that appear in each of the Lodi collection still lifes are a mainstay of his repertory, but no more so than the brass candlesticks or the artist's personal stock of terracotta pitchers and jugs. Even the motifs that seem so particular - green fennels, rack of lamb, or scattered beans - make guest appearances in other pictures. On the other hand, the splendid blue-and-white porcelain plate is an exceptional presence. Proudly displayed in the center, refracted darkly through the bottle glass, this plate is, to the best of our knowledge, unique. Magini must have borrowed it for the occasion, perhaps from the patron of these pictures.

Although Magini's compositions are not trompe l'oeil deceptions, they share an interest in the illusion of real time. The large number of pairs of still lifes in his work is no accident, since they heighten the impression of déjà vu. The present pictures are prime examples. Viewed together, they give a curious impression of indefinable goings-on beneath the surface. The candlestick and stoppered bottle seem to slip in opposite directions while the brown jug quietly changes its handle. Cool tones give way to warm tones and vice versa: the green fennel are replaced by red and yellow fruit, while the rack of lamb turns into a hill of beans. The effect is constructed upon the underlying equilibrium, a kind of hidden geometry, in the spacing of the elements. The forms are pulled into focus by the light and airy brushwork that also smoothes the edges. A respectful hush descends upon the kitchen sideboard where every piece takes its place. The Still Life with Fennel contains a rare pentimento: the edges of the chopping block were noticeably adjusted to bring them closer to the viewer's eye.

We are grateful to Dr John Spike for the above catalogue entry.

VAT rate of 5% is payable on hammer price and at 17.5% on the buyer's premium.