Still life with flowers (Arellano, Dresden)
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| Still life with flowers |
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| Juan de Arellano , 1670/75 |
| Oil on canvas |
| 85 × 105 cm |
| Old Masters Picture Gallery |
The floral still life by Juan de Arellano is a still life of the Spanish Baroque , which was painted around 1670/1675. The painting, executed in oil on canvas, is 85 centimeters high and 105 centimeters wide. It has been part of the collection of the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in Dresden since 2006 , where it is part of one of the most important collections of Spanish paintings in Germany. There it is listed under Gal. 2006/01.
description
Against a dark, neutral background, the painting shows a wicker basket on a stone pedestal, filled with flowers. These include snowball , tulips , roses , carnations , cornflower , bellflower , hyacinth , iris , anemones , jasmine and cherry blossoms . Some branches of the flower have fallen on the stone base. The wickerwork of the basket is extremely filigree, so that it reveals the abundance of flowers inside and is not usable for everyday use. Arellano is also not interested in ostensible realism when it comes to the display of flowers, since their reproduction is less precise than in Dutch models and the plants shown bloomed at different times. The flowers are arranged in such a way that they hardly overlap and are shown to advantage individually. A fabric with red and white accents in which the other colors are used sparingly and to a limited extent is dominant.
The painting is in good condition. The gray background shows some retouching, especially to the right of the basket and on the edges of the picture. In the hydrangea blossoms, you can see applications of color and accents that indicate overwork. The color layer has an over-retouched notch or edge at the edges. Since 2008, the painting has been shown in a newly made gallery frame. The picture is signed at the bottom of the stone base.
background
The still life painting was an important branch of Spanish art. Already in paintings by artists such as Antonio de Pereda and Diego Rodríguez de Silva y Velázquez , the realistic depiction of everyday objects and fruits is an important aspect. A few autonomous still lifes by Francisco de Zurbarán are even known. Specialists such as Juan Sánchez Cotán , Juan van der Hamen y León and Arellano are particularly important in this area . Of the latter, apart from two religious depictions and one still life with fruit, only still life with flowers are known.
Arellano created his numerous still lifes according to standard formats. The Dresden picture shows the standard format for the large flower baskets. Mostly he designed pairs of images, but the standardization of the format makes it difficult to identify a counterpart. The gray background, which is kept relatively light, allows dating to the late work of Arellano. The Dresden flower still life is likely to be one of his latest works. It is related to other flower baskets in the Museo del Prado and a basket image in the Museo de Bellas Artes de Bilbao . The latter is dated to 1671. These paintings, however, are much more precise in the depiction of flowers, the details and the differentiation of light and shadow. In the artist's last works, the treatment of the motif becomes more free. The blue-red contrasts in the shadow zones that the Dresden picture has can also be found in those in Madrid and Bilbao.
Provenance
The provenance of Arellano's floral still life is largely unclear. In 1970, Ingvar Bergström stated that it came from a Spanish private property without further details. After that, the painting was in a private collection in the Rhineland. In 2006, with the support of the Friends of the Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, the Ernst von Siemens Art Foundation and the Kulturstiftung der Länder, the work was acquired for the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister , where it represents the last addition to the 34 works of Spanish painting. This means that a branch of Spanish painting that is seldom present in German collections - important still life painting - is represented in the Dresden gallery.
literature
- Matthias Less: State Art Collections Dresden. Old Masters Picture Gallery. Inventory catalog Spanish painting. Prestel, Munich 2012, ISBN 978-3-7913-5179-7 .
- Heinz Spielmann and Ortrud Westheider (eds.): Greco, Velázquez, Goya. Spanish painting from German collections . Prestel, Munich 2005, ISBN 3-7913-3412-3 .
Web links
Individual evidence
- ^ A b c Matthias Less: State Art Collections Dresden. Old Masters Picture Gallery. Inventory catalog Spanish painting. Prestel, 2012, p. 36.
- ^ A b Matthias Less: State Art Collections Dresden. Old Masters Picture Gallery. Inventory catalog Spanish painting. Prestel, 2012, p. 38.
- ^ Matthias Less: State Art Collections Dresden. Old Masters Picture Gallery. Inventory catalog Spanish painting. Prestel, 2012, p. 36f.