Alessandro De' Pesci (active Until 1750), Seller Of Fish

Alessandro de' Pesci (active until 1750)

Seller of fish

Oil on canvas, cm 137 x 84

Critical Sheet Prof. Alberto Crispo

The fish-themed still life can be chronologically framed between the end of the seventeenth and the beginning of the eighteenth century while the school to which we may refer is that of Naples. The work in fact finds many tangencies with the treatment of this genre made in Naples during the seventeenth century and then continued even in the following century, often also through the heirs of families and shops that had established both in the city and outside, including De Caro, De Matteis and Recco. In the canvas stands out a piece of still life that is detached from the rest of the work, positioned in the lower part and enjoying greater illumination than the sitting fisherman who occupies with his figure the highest portion; If you observe the rendering of the scales or the shell of the turtle, another recurring subject in the still lifes of these artists and their fellow-countrymen such as Baldassarre de Indeed, it has long been considered the master of speckled fish. The name of this anonymous artist has been assigned to many works of still life with fish and crustaceans protagonists, which were then often referred to the hand of Elena Recco, daughter of the painter Giuseppe, in turn instructed to paint by his father and uncle. This characteristic made one part of the critics develop the aforementioned pseudonym, also used for another personality of the same period, namely Alessandro de' Pesci, artist to whom this canvas can be referred and who was active in Rome in the second half of the eighteenth century; of him few works are preserved and his biography is still incomplete for long stretches.