Still Life with Bread, Salami, and Nuts

The ingredients of a simple meal lie arranged on a wooden table — a torn loaf and a piece of salami, scattered nuts, a knife and pewter plate, with a glass and a wine carafe whose shadowed side carries the artist’s initials, G.C. Giacomo Ceruti, the Brescian painter best known for his compassionate scenes of the poor, produced a celebrated series of such still lifes in his later years; this example, painted on paper laid down on canvas about 1750 to 1760, is the companion of the Getty’s own Still Life with Hen and Onion. Its plain, unidealised naturalism — foodstuffs seen without opulence and recorded with quiet accuracy — set Ceruti apart from the showier still-life traditions of the eighteenth century. The painting is held in the J. Paul Getty Museum.