{"id":5486,"date":"2024-11-15T10:07:40","date_gmt":"2024-11-15T09:07:40","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.pinacotecafaenza.it\/?post_type=artista&p=5486"},"modified":"2024-12-11T12:47:11","modified_gmt":"2024-12-11T11:47:11","slug":"giuseppe-recco","status":"publish","type":"artista","link":"https:\/\/www.pinacotecafaenza.it\/en\/artista\/giuseppe-recco\/","title":{"rendered":"Giuseppe Recco"},"content":{"rendered":"

Born to the art (his father was Giacomo Recco, a painter chiefly known for his floral works) and probably a nephew of Giovan Battista Recco (a canny member of Ribera\u2019s workshop who specialised in compositions with animals and kitchens) Giuseppe Recco is, if not the greatest, then certainly the best known of the post-Caravaggesque and Baroque still-life masters. Writing in the mid-18th century, half a century after the artist\u2019s death, Bernardo De Dominici, author of the lives of Neapolitan artists and a man raised in the uncompromising classicism of Francesco Solimena, describes Recco as \u201cverily a singular painter of flowers, fruits, sweetmeats, fish, game, greens\u201d (in that order) \u2013 and in his role as a critic of the style, he was spot on. (in Vite de’ pittori, scultori ed architetti napoletani<\/em>, III, 1, Napoli 1742- c.1745, ed. F. Sricchia Santoro, A. Zezza, Napoli 2008, pp. 542, 546-550).<\/p>\n

We do not actually know a great deal about Recco, and it is difficult to provide details for still-life corpuses of paintings which are still being thrashed out and show gaps in the documentary evidence for them, or to point to stylistic advances or changes that would be easier to detect in religious or historical paintings. While in Recco\u2019s case the dates are more numerous for the 1670s, we should remember that he was in contact with the Marquis of Los Velez, Viceroy of Naples, from 1675 to 1682, while in 1671 he styled himself a \u2018cavaliere<\/em>\u2019 in a picture now in the Museo di Capodimonte, thus testifying to his recognition as an artist. It is easy to imagine that such a set of patrons, not just of the local variety, paved the way for him to be received at court. At the turn of the century, Charles II\u2019s invitation to him to travel to Madrid put wings on his feet, preparing the stage for a finale that might have been no less triumphant than that of Luca Giordano (who worked in Madrid from 1692 to 1702). A shipwreck in Alicante, however, put an end to his life before the start of the new century. In a manner similar to his contemporary Andrea Vaccaro, an artist who lived from 1604 to 1670, but unlike Luca Giordano, who died in 1705 and who does not appear, in any case, to have painted stand-alone still-lifes, Recco\u2019s early career and early maturity are uncertain and need to be completely rethought. Assuming we accept that still-life is one of the greatest challenges for the connoisseur, we can detect echoes in the painter\u2019s earlier work of the style of that supreme Spanish artist Ribera, who settled in Naples in 1616. But when, in his maturity, our lens expands to take in Recco\u2019s more prolific output, comprising compositions of immense scenographical expertise, we are left with no choice but to draw a comparison with no less a master than Giordano himself (for an overview on the artist, see G. Forgione, Giuseppe Recco, ad vocem<\/em>, in Dizionario Biografico degli Italiani<\/em>, 86, 2016, pp. 690-693)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"featured_media":0,"template":"","class_list":["post-5486","artista","type-artista","status-publish","hentry"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinacotecafaenza.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artista\/5486","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinacotecafaenza.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/artista"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinacotecafaenza.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/artista"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.pinacotecafaenza.it\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5486"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}