Catalogue-2014-Jean-Luc-Baroni

Federico Zandomeneghi
Venice 1841-1917 Paris
23
Still Life with Fruit.
Oil on canvas. Signed Zandomeneghi upper left.
27 x 34,5 cms. (10 5 /8 x 13 ½ in.)
Literature: Federico Zandomeneghi, Catalogo Generale, New Edition, Fondazione Enrico Piceni,
Scheiwiller Libri, Milan, 2006, described and reproduced in black and white under cat. 865, p. 383,
reproduced in colour p. 184.
A Venetian by birth, Federico Zandomeneghi associated with the Macchiaioli in Florence before moving
to Paris in 1874 at the age of 33, never to return to Italy. By the late 1870s he had become a habitué
of the Café de la Nouvelle-Athènes on the Place Pigalle in Montmartre, where he met and befriended
Edgar Degas. The two artists, both difficult, ill-tempered characters, were to remain lifelong friends.
Degas persuaded Zandomeneghi to exhibit at the fourth Impressionist exhibition in 1879, and the Italian
also took part in the Impressionist exhibitions of 1880, 1881 and 1886. Zandomeneghi was represented
in Paris by Paul Durand-Ruel, who showed his pastels to some acclaim in America, during the 1890s.
But he remained largely unappreciated in Italy until after his death. Indeed, when the Italian art critic
Diego Martelli visited Paris in 1878, he wrote to the painter Giovanni Fattori that Zandomeneghi’s work
belonged to “a new kind of painting whose concept and aim those at home cannot comprehend.”
Indeed, it was not until 1914 that Zandomeneghi was given his first one-man show in his native country,
at the Venice Biennale of that year.
Zandomeneghi is best known for his depiction of women; his favourite subjects were often portrayed in
the intimacy of their daily activities: from waking up in the morning to trying on a fashionable hat, or
having a conversation with a friend on a sofa. In a few of these works the colours of fabric and furnishings
were echoed by flowers and fruit adorning the interiors of houses. There are women arranging bunches of
wild flowers in vases and plates with fruit compositions in works of the 1880s and 1890s; for example in
Al Caffè Nouvelle Athène 1 , dated 1885 now in a private Collection, the couple are seated at a table with
a still life with oranges and a pear in front of them. However it was not until the first decades of the 20 th
century that Zandomeneghi dedicated himself fully to this genre. The present work can be dated to those
years and compared to a small number of still lives such as Pommes 2 , dated 1917 and now in the Traversi
collection Milan, and another Still Life of apples 3 , also dated 1917. The present work has a bold spareness
of composition which is almost severe; Zandomenighi appears to be concentrating on the volumes of the
fruit almost exluding the decorative qualities of other of his still lives. Yet, closer inspection reveals an
extremely subtle use of colour, the white tablecloth acts in strong contrast against the dark wall behind
the fruit but both foreground and background are painted with a considerable range of tones and brush
strokes thereby giving richness and luminosity to the composition.
In a letter written by Zandomeneghi to his compatriot Vittorio Pica, dated 18 th April 1916, the artist
declared: “You are right to say that in Italy, the so-called still life is considered as a frivolity and that this
stupidity we must also blame on the conceited influence of Germany which for a long time has infiltrated
the spirit and the pagan traditions of our race. Here at least the Courbets, Delacroixs, the prodigious
Manet and a hundred others have left us enduring models of superb still lives …”. This comment serves
to underline to what extent Zandomenighi was working within the hierarchy of French painting and
felt himself in tune with French artistic sensibility. In turning to still-lives he was in some sense paying
homage to the line of exceptional French painters who had devoted all or part of their careers to this
genre: Chardin, Fantin-Latour and of course, Courbet and Manet also.
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