Bodegón with bread, two sweet boxes, a green-glazed Biar honey pot and a Manises ceramic jar signed with initials 'L.M. z' (lower right) oil on canvas 14 1/2 x 19 3/8 in. (36.8 x 49.2 cm.)
Madrid, Sociedad Española de Amigos del Arte, Floreros y Bodegones en la Pintura Española, 1935, no. 82. Madrid, Tesoros de las colecciones particulares madrileñas: Pintura desde el siglo XV a Goya, 1987, no. 37.
Literature
J. Cavestany, Floreros y bodegones en la pintura española, Madrid, 1936-1940, p. 161, no. 82. J. Luna, Luis Meléndez: Bodegonista español del siglo XVIII, Madrid, 1982, no. 30, illustrated. L.C. Gutiérrez Alonso, 'Precisiones a la cerámica de los bodegones de Luis Meléndez', Boletín del Museo del Prado 4, 1983, XII, p. 160. P. Cherry and J. Luna, exhibition catalogue, Luis Meléndez Bodegones, 17 February-16 May 2004, Prado Museum, Madrid, p. 196, no. 21.
Provenance
(Probably) King Charles IV of Spain, by descent through the Infante Don Gabriel to his nephew Don Sebastián Gabriel de Borbón (1811-1875), in whose inventory of 1835 the present picture is listed as in the Pieza de despacho of his Galería de Pinturas: 'n. 90. Otro en id. [canvas] de 1 pie y 4 1/2 pulgadas de alto, por 1 pie y 9 1/2 pulgadas de ancho. Hay en el unos trenzados unas cajas de dulces y dos tarros de lo mismo. Está restaurado por Bueno y tiene marco tallado y dorado...Luis Meléndez (firmado)' (La Galería de Pinturas de S.A.R. el Sermo. Señor Ynfante Don Sebastián Gabriel, in M. Agueda, 'La colección de pinturas del infante Don Sebastián Gabriel', Boletín del Museo del Prado, III, no. 8, May-August 1982, p. 109), by whom bequeathed to his son Don Luís de Borbón y Borbón, Duque de Ansola, by whom bequeathed to his son Don Manfredo de Borbón y Bernaldo de Quiros, Duque de Hernani (1893-1979), and by descent to the present owners.
Notes
THE PROPERTY OF A EUROPEAN NOBLE FAMILY (lot 74)
Dated by Tufts (loc. cit.) to circa 1770-1771, this harmonious and disarmingly simple composition must rank as one of the most perfect by the greatest still life painter in Spain of the time.
The picture is listed in the 1835 inventory of the great-nephew of King Charles IV, the Infante Don Sebastián Gabriel (see provenance and figs. 1 and 2). This was at an early stage in his adult life; it is thus most probable that the picture was one of the many works of art that he acquired by inheritance from his great-uncle. Although it was certainly not one of the series of bodegones by Meléndez painted circa 1771 for the Gabinete de Historia Natural of the Prince of Asturias (later Charles IV), it is quite possible that it was one of the 'four or five' that the Prince was known already to have at that time (see Cherry, op. cit., p. 29).
The Infante Don Sebastián Gabriel Borbón y Braganza (for the information about whom recorded below, see M. Agueda, in The Dictionary of Art, J. Turner, ed., London, 1996, 4, pp. 378-9) was the son of Pedro de Borbón and the Infanta Doña Maria-Teresa de Braganza; he was married first to Maria Amalia of Naples and then in 1860 to Maria Cristina (1833-1902), the sister-in-law of Queen Isabella II. An artist in his own right, in 1827 he was elected Académico de Mérito of the Academia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando, Madrid, and travelled for many years in Italy, copying works of art and painting landscapes. He was also a patron of contemporary artists, supporting Alejandro Ferrant in Italy with a pension and commissioning paintings from José Ribelles, Rafael Tejeo and Juan Gálvez.
The formation of his remarkable collection, however, began with inheritances from his father, and was augmented by his two wives and by the purchases he made through his friend, the painter José de Madrazo y Agudo, who acted as intermediary. The inventory of 1835 (see above) reveals that by that early date his collection was almost complete. His preference was for seventeenth-century Spanish paintings, including such works as Antonio de Pereda's Annunciation in the Prado, Madrid, and Descent from the Cross in the Musée des Beaux-Arts, Marseilles, Murillo's Miracle of the Porciuncula (Cologne, Wallraf-Richartz-Museum), Alonso Cano's The Dominican (Munich, Alte Pinakothek) and Saint Bernard and the Virgin (Madrid, Prado), Juan Carreño de Miranda's Portrait of Charles II (Valenciennes, Musée des Beaux-Arts) and Velázquez's Doña Margarita (San Diego, Museum of Art). Only two sixteenth-century Spanish painters were represented in the Infante's collection: Juan de Juanes and El Greco, his acquisition of the latter's Assumption (Chicago, Art Institute) and Saint Bernard (Madrid, Prado) presaging the re-evaluation of that artist that took place in the nineteenth century.
There were relatively few examples of eighteenth-century Spanish painting, but what he had was impressive: Goya's Majas on the Balcony (New York, Metropolitan Museum), Goya's Monk and Nun, (Private collection, Great Britain), as well as at least two other still lifes by Meléndez and the latter's self-portrait now in the Louvre. Netherlandish painting was also well represented and included Hugo van der Goes's Adoration of the Shepherds (Berlin, Gemäldegalerie), Van der Weyden's Saint Luke and the Virgin (Boston, Museum of Fine Arts), and Metsys' Salvator Mundi (Aachen, Musée des Beaux-Arts). In 1837 the Infante's possessions were confiscated for political reasons, his immense library was given to the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid, and his collection of paintings was exhibited in the Museo de la Trinidad, together with pictures acquired from the suppression of the religious orders. Shortly before his death, however, his property was returned to him and, after his death, a first sale was held in Pau in 1876 and another in the Hôtel Drouot in Paris in 1890. When his widow died a final sale was held in Madrid in 1902, the remainder of the collection, including the present lot, staying in the possession of the heirs.
Son and pupil of the portrait miniaturist Francisco Antonio Meléndez, Luis was born in Naples, but moved to Madrid where he was to become assistant to Louis-Michel van Loo, court painter to King Philip V, and to be one of the first students to be accepted into the new, provisional Accademia de Bellas Artes de San Fernando. After another stay in Naples, he returned to Madrid to assist on a commission to paint choir-books for the new Royal Chapel. It was in the 1760s that Luis became a specialist in painting still lifes, of which about one hundred survive. Forty-four of these used to decorate the walls of the Palacio Real in Aranjuez, the King's summer residence outside Madrid.
Employing a style that looked to both Neapolitan still-life painting and the work of the seventeenth-century Spanish pioneers in the genre, such as Francisco de Zurbarán and Juan Sánchez Cotán, Meléndez emphasised in his work the solidity and texture of the fruit, vegetables and objects that he chose to depict, usually setting his compositions against a dark or neutral background and modelled by a strong, almost Caravaggesque, light. In this he differs from the other great European artist of the time specialising in still life, Chardin, who concentrated more on the decorative surface of a picture, employing a lighter and wider range of palette.
In their exhibition catalogue, Jordan and Cherry write that Meléndez 'made use of things he owned, often repeating these objects in different contexts' (exhibition catalogue, Spanish Still Life from Velázquez to Goya, the National Gallery, London, 1995, pp. 156-7). Thus, the green-glazed Biar honey-pot on the left side of this composition is repeated in the Bodegón with lemons (Cherry, op. cit. 2004, no. 19) and a similar, although not identical, Manises jar can also be seen, for example, in the Bodegón with oranges in the Prado (ibid., no. 5).
The bread rolls are here positioned with what Cherry calls 'studied disorder'- the upturned roll in the centre, begins a diagonal line that is continued by the upturned sweet box behind it; yet this is beautifully balanced by the diagonal formed by the other sweet box leading to the taller Manises jar on the right of the canvas. Thus Meléndez gives a kind of harmonious 'X' shape to this composition, and binds it all together with an acutely observed play of light and shadow to produce a work of quiet monumentality.
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