Still Life with Figs and Bread

A shallow Talavera dish in the scalloped castañuela style overflows with green and deep-purple figs beside a golden crusty loaf, a long-necked black flask, a small wooden barrel and a staved keg cooler holding a copper vessel among pale ice shavings, all crowded on a rough wooden ledge against a dark brown ground, the bone handle of a kitchen knife projecting into the viewer’s space. Luis Meléndez, the greatest still-life painter of eighteenth-century Spain and one of the finest of the genre anywhere in Europe, painted this vertical composition about 1770 in the exacting, light-filled manner that descends from the great Spanish bodegón tradition; the iridescent skins of the figs, the glint of window light on the inky bottle and the varied textures of wood, cork, copper and bread are rendered with virtuoso control of oil. An x-ray taken at the National Gallery reveals that he originally painted a wedge of cheese and red berries where the figs and knife now stand, reworking the composition as he refined it. The National Gallery of Art acquired the picture in 2000 through the Patrons’ Permanent Fund. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.