GIACOMO NANI

(Porto Ercole, 1698 - Naples, 1755) Table set with sweets, vegetables, eggs, glasses, dog eating pasta and dove Signed in the center: Giacomo Nani f. Oil on canvas, 74.5X128 cm. The canvas presented here for its scenic composition and iconography finds precise comparisons with the one in the Capodimonte Museum, with which it shares similar measurements (fig. 1; oil on canvas, 76X130 cm; Cf. Santucci 2010). A pupil of Andrea Belvedere and Gaspare Lopez, Giacomo Nani created still lifes with a naturalistic spirit, in affinity with Tommaso Realfonso (Naples, c. 1677 ; post 1743), constructing his compositions by drawing inspiration from compositional and aesthetic modules inferred from the works of Giovanni Battista Ruoppolo (Naples, 1629 ; 1693) and Giuseppe Recco (Naples, 1634 ; Alicante, 1695), but with greater scenic freedom. According to De Dominici, the artist was Belvedere's best pupil and 'a universal painter in all that a professor can paint.' The most conspicuous and valuable nucleus of his catalog consists of still lifes of flowers, executed in a style close to that of Gaspare Lopez (Naples, 1650 ; Florence, 1740), following a tendentially Rococo development, in similarity to Nicola Casissa, and then developing a naturamortistic genre of a purely seventeenth-century animalier and neo-naturalist taste. Reference bibliography: N. Spinosa, Neapolitan Painting of the Eighteenth Century. Dal Barocco al Rococò, Naples 1988, pp. 65-69; 96, figs. 196-199 A. Tecce, Giacomo Nani, in La Natura morta in Italia, Milan 1989, vol. II, p. 960 M. Santucci, in Museo Nazionale di Capodimonte. Paintings of the 18th Century, The Neapolitan School. Le collezioni borboniche e postunitarie, Naples 2010, p. 130, no. 99 a-b, with previous bibliography