Caravaggio - Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge 1605-1610
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
 |
Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge 1605-1610
87x135cm oil/canvas
Private Collection
The image is only being used for informational and educational purposes
<< Previous G a l l e r y Next >>
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia:
The picture has been variously dated between 1601 and 1610 (Caravaggio scholar John T. Spike lists the date as circa 1603 in the second revised edition[1] of his study of the artist). It depicts a wicker basket heaped with various fruit and vegetables sitting on a stone table, caught in Caravaggio's usual strong yet mellow shaft of light falling from top left, "as if through a hole in the ceiling." (Caravaggio at around this time was sued by a landlady for having cut a hole in the ceiling of the rooms he rented, presumably to create his characteristic lighting). The bulk of the space is taken up by the large melons, marrows and pumpkins, the watermelon and pumpkin cut open to display the interior, the marrows, long and twisting, seeming to wish to escape the two-dimensional space of the picture plane.
While at one level the painting is a bravura study of texture and form and light, the Renaissance symbology of fruit and vegetables was rich and intricate, and given this fact and the fact that so many of Caravaggio's apparently simple paintings, such as Boy Bitten by a Lizard, in fact carry coded messages, it is not unlikely that the Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge is equally complex. Nevertheless, no plausible reading has so far been advanced, although several commentators have noted the visual suggestiveness of the moistly cut fruits and melons and the writhing, thrusting marrows.