Kitchen Still Life

Utensils and provisions of a kitchen are arranged as a still life and painted with the plain-spoken naturalism of seventeenth-century Emilia, where the everyday objects of cooking first became a subject worthy of the canvas. Paolo Antonio Barbieri, younger brother of the great Guercino and a member of his workshop at Cento, made such kitchen pieces his specialty, working in the shadow of a brother whose fame long eclipsed his own; his independent still lifes are rare and are now prized for the rediscovery of Italian Baroque naturalism. The canvas was with the New York dealer Julius Weitzner before the Art Institute of Chicago purchased it in 1934. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.