Still Life with Grapes and a Bird

Still Life with Grapes and a Bird

Still Life with Grapes and a Bird
Artist:Antonio Leonelli (Antonio da Crevalcore) (Italian, Crevalcore, born by 1443–died by 1525, Bologna (?))
Date:ca. 1500–1510
Medium:Oil on canvas
Dimensions:15 5/8 × 15 5/8 in. (39.7 × 39.7 cm)
Classification:Paintings
Credit Line:Promised Gift of Stanley David Moss

This is among the earliest surviving independent still lifes in European painting. It deliberately makes reference to a celebrated work of the fifth-century-B.C. Greek painter Zeuxis, who “produced a picture of grapes so successfully represented that birds flew up to it.” This sort of classically inspired picture appealed to erudite patrons such as Isabella d’Este (1474–1539), the Marchesa of Mantua, for whom we know Crevalcore painted a still life in 1506; he was, in fact, compared to Zeuxis by a scholar writing in 1513. The composition has much in common with illusionistic wood inlay (intarsia), such as found in the Gubbio Studiolo in this museum.

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