Filippo Massaro . Still Life, Circa 1925

FILIPPO MASSARO
(Palermo, 1900 – after 1965)

Still Life, circa 1925

Pair of oil paintings on panel, 45x55 cm

Signed lower right "Massaro"

Massaro’s exceptional painterly skill shines through in these two works, which are certainly in the Novecento style, but above all reminiscent of Caravaggio.

References to highly balanced compositions associated with the master Lombardo is evident in both works, but particularly striking in the beautiful depiction of fruit on the white tablecloth, where pears and apples seem to have been taken directly from Merisi’s earliest known Roman works.

As for his contemporaries, his stylistic signature certainly suggests influences from Dudreville and Sciltian, but even more so from Battaini—all painters associated with a hyperrealistic still-life style that draws, as mentioned, on the great masters of the seventeenth century, especially those from Lombardy.