Description

This group of four canvases representing landscapes with still lives representing flowers and fruit are signed by the Neapolitan painter Giacomo Nani. De Dominici tells us about his apprenticeship with him, which took place first in Naples at Andrea Belvedere and then at Gaspare Lopez, with whom he immediately dedicated himself to the genre of still life. During his more mature production, Nani approaches the disengaged compositional taste of Rococò and then returns to a more deeply felt naturalistic dimension in his latest pictorial production. In this latest, the landscape merges with still life in delicate compositional mimesis. This series of paintings shows a meticulously depicted nature. This can be seen from the detail of the trees, always present in each of these canvases, as in that of the plumage of birds and small insects distributed on the pit surface. The depth of the landscape, which “melts” above the horizon, recalls the compositions of Salvator Rosa and a deeply felt vision of the landscape, which almost appears as pre-romantic.

Bibl.: N. Spinosa, Pittura napoletana del Settecento. Dal Barocco al Rococò, Napoli 1988, pp. 65-69; 96.