1042 - Abraham Brueghel

Abraham Brueghel Still Life with Fruit and a Parrot Oil on canvas (relined). 70 x 84.5 cm. Signed lower right: ABreugeL.F.Roma (AB in ligature). Provenance Coll. Kardinal Federico Borromeo the Younger (1617–1673), Rome. – By descent in the Borromeo family. – Coll. Max von Bleichert, Leipzig, 1930. – Sotheby's, New York, 10.1.1991, Lot 65 (as attr. to Abraham Brueghel). – Private Collection, Netherlands.– Dorotheum, Vienna, 22.06.2010, Lot 32 (as attr. to Abraham Brueghel). – Private Collection, Belgium. Exhibitions La Dinastia Brueghel, Villa Olmo/Museum of Art, Como/Tel Aviv 2012, no. 53. Literature Exh. cat. Como/Tel Aviv 2012: La Dinastia Brueghel, eds.: S. Gaddi, D. J. Lurie and J. de Maere, Mailand 2012, no. 53, pp. 219–220, with fig. Seductively, an opulent arrangement of fruit lies spread out on a stone floor. Grapes, peaches, plums and nuts, some opened or nibbled at, are piled up in several tiers. They have attracted a parrot, perched on a pumpkin to the right. It gazes greedily toward the invitingly opened pomegranate, thereby standing in for the viewers' own response. Abraham Brueghel, the emigrant of the famous Antwerp dynasty of painters, stood in the tradition of his celebrated grandfather, the flower still-life painter Jan Brueghel the Elder (1568-1625). Unlike him, however, he was a specialist in fruit, which he painted in lush, dynamic compositions with a freer brushstroke. The present sensuous still life was painted in papal Rome, as the signature at the lower right edge reveals, perhaps during his first stay in the city around 1649. Comparable fruit still lifes on stone floors by Brueghel are in the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (inv. no. 71.118) and the Hermitage in St Petersburg (inv. no. 7580). The famous "Bentvueghel" was admitted to the Roman painters' guild, the Accademia di San Luca, on 3 August 1670. Active in Naples in the last phase of his life, "Brueghel, il Napolitano" died there in 1697.