
Poppy Harvey-Jones
Head of Sale
£80,000 - £120,000
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Provenance
Private Collection, Florence
Sale, Dorotheum, Vienna, 14 October 2008, lot 14
Sale, Porro, Milan, 21 October 2009, lots 54 and 55
Exhibited
Travelling exhibition: 10 November 2006 - 13 January 2008
Muscarelle Museum of Art, College of William and Mary, Williamsburg
Museum of Fine Arts, St. Petersburg, Florida
Memorial Art Gallery of Rochester, New York
Museum of Fine Arts, Sante Fe, New Mexico
Chasen Museum of Art, University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin
The Hyde Collection, Glen Falls, New York
The present paintings are excellent examples of campionari of fruit. They are less a rigorous scientific illustration of nature, of the type established by Ligozzi, but more intended to demonstrate to a patron the richness of his lands. Grand Duke Cosimo III commissioned Bimbi himself to execute a group of these frutterie for his casino, La Topaia, at his villa of Castello. One example of these is his signed and dated 'portrait' of cherries of 1699 now in Gallerie Fiorentine. The closest in type to the present pair of paintings is the large Campionario di frutta di luglio now in the Museo di Capodimonte, Naples. The latter work is unsigned but shows a very similar grouping of fruit on large platters, a discrete key of the fruit types, and other decorative peripheral objects.
Please note the additional Literature for the present lot: M. Chiarini, Natura Morta: Still-life Painting and the Medici Collections, Salerno, 2006, p. 74, ill. p. 75, cat. nos. 27/28 (as Bartolomeo Bimbi and studio).