Abraham Brueghel

(Anversa , 1631 - Napoli, 1697)

The canvas, which depicts a still life with a pear, grapes and some chestnuts, is striking for the intelligence of the compositional choice and the great quality. Brueghel, a relative of the great Pieter Bruegel the Elder, spent a large part of his life in Italy, between Rome and Naples, where he established himself as one of the leading still life painters, also collaborating with the most important personalities of the time, such as Brandi or Vaccaro , who often took care of inserting the figures into his paintings. Warm colors, subtle lighting effects, attention to the choice and arrangement of fruit, qualities clearly visible in the painting presented here, made Brueghel's painting famous, destined to represent a fundamental model for the following decades. We also remember how the selection of the various components to represent, in Brueghel's production as well as in that of the masters of his time, did not take place on the basis of a simple aesthetic choice, but was the result of a precise search for complex symbols, linked to the most different, from that of the memento mori to that of sexuality. Even if this aspect, in some ways esoteric, is now difficult to understand and recover, we continue to feel its charm, albeit in a subtle and ineffable way.

Signed lower left: A. B. (monogram for Abraham Brueghel)