Barberini collection, Rome.

This beautifully arranged basket of fruit on a stone ledge by Bartolomeo Cavarozzi is both an important and evocative example of the first generation of Roman still life painting. Completed sometime in the 1610s or 1620s, by which time Cavarozzi had fully embraced the manner of Caravaggio, the present canvas dramatically exemplifies the advances made in the still life genre in the early seicento. What appears to be a straightforward display of fruit is in fact a carefully thought out and studied composition which incorporates the lessons of Caravaggio's groundbreaking, realistic approach to the genre.

The dynamic artistic environment in which this basket of fruit on a stone ledge was created cannot be overstated. Certainly, Caravaggio was the leading proponent of the genre, if not through the number of independent still lifes he executed, then through the obvious skill and bold refinement he brought to its development. Without question, his Basket of Fruit (1599, Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan) emerges as perhaps the most strikingly original contribution to Italian still life painting. Indeed, the wicker basket in the present work, and the manner in which it convincingly hangs over the stone ledge, immediately recall Caravaggio's own example from the Ambrosiana.

The lower left corner of the composition is inscribed with an inventory number, 439, which has been identified as coming from the Barberini-Sciarra collection. This particular inventory number almost certainly corresponds with a list drawn up in 1812 on the occasion of a division of assets between the Barberini and Sciarra families. There are other extant pictures with this same provenance bearing inventory numbers of the same type, including a Portrait of Don Giulio Cesare Barberini di Sciarra, Prince of Palestrina, today in a private collection (see E. P. Bowron, Pompeo Batoni: A Complete Catalogue of His Paintings, New Haven and London 2016, vol. II, p. 413, cat. no. 333, inscribed with the number 435).

The present painting also clearly relates to one of the most famous still life compositions painted in Rome in the first decades of the seventeenth century, the so-called Acquavella Still Life (the Still-life with a Basket of Fruit and a Vase of Flowers formerly with the Acquavella Gallery, New York, and subsequently in the Lorenzetti collection, Bergamo). A passionate debate arose amongst the scholars upon the discovery of the Acquavella Still Life, divided between those who endorsed the identification of the Acquavella Still Life Master with Bartolomeo Cavarozzi and those who preferred to consider the painter to be a great and as yet anonymous master. The most recent and most comprehensive analysis of the problem can be found in Giuseppe Porzio's essay quoted here in literature, in which the Neapolitan scholar firmly endorses the identification of the Acquavella Still Life Master with Bartolomeo Cavarozzi. The recent discovery of another version of this composition (Liechtenstein collection, Vaduz, previously with Colnaghi, London), opened new questions with regard to the workshop practice of Bartolomeo Cavarozzi.

Born in Viterbo in 1587, Cavarozzi arrived in Rome in around 1600. He soon came into contact with the Crescenzi family, who would become his most important patrons: not only would Cavarozzi study in the academy of art established by Giovanni Battista Crescenzi (1577–1635) and he eventually assumed the name of Bartolomeo del Crescenzi. He moved into the family palazzo near the Pantheon, where he was probably trained by the late-mannerist painter Cristoforo Roncalli, known as Pomarancio, who was also closely associated with the Crescenzi family. Pomarancio's influence can be felt in Cavarozzi's earliest known work, dated 1608, a Saint Ursula and her Companions, today in the church of San Marco in Rome. Compared with Cavarozzi’s later Caravaggesque phase it is a rather dull work which embodies that turn-of-the-century Mannerist style of Roman art which had not yet embraced or understood Caravaggism. Little is known of Cavarozzi’s œuvre during the first half of the 1610s but by around 1615 he had fully adopted Caravaggio's manner.

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