Kitchen Still Life
Mid-XVIIcentury.Not on display
Several aspects of this undated work indicate it was painted during the transition between the first and second halves of the 17th century. It clearly draws on Van der Hamen but some smaller details appear to foreshadow the baroque tendencies explored by Pereda in that century’s sixth decade, when Philip IV’s (1621-1665) reign was beginning to decline. And as Pérez Sánchez pointed out (1982, no. 40), It also echoes contemporaneous Neapolitan creations of the sort associated with the Reccos and Ruoppolo.
Ponce, who apprenticed to Van der Hamen and later became one of his collaborators, drew various ideas from his teacher without fully adopting his stylistic traits. Here we see a curious combination of kitchen utensils arranged on a long stone surface whose right edge is visible. And on the left, the scene’s everyday rigor is softened by flowers. The deliberate disorder generated by the crowded elements suggests they were laid out haphazardly due to a lack of space but their overall presentation remains frontal and parallel to the work’s main axis. With its tenebrist resonances, the lighting brings out the volumes in contrast with the shadows. The reduced palette favors earth tones enlivened with touches of red, white, green and yellow. Some of these characteristics recall the work of Loarte or Van der Hamen’s final period: an accumulation of objects that conveys a sort of confused disorganization, somewhat lighter backgrounds, fine tactile qualities, a contrast between highlights and matte surfaces, certain details of the stone surface’s edge, back-lit motives and the play of diagonals all suggest a new consideration of the inert aspects of the still life on the threshold of the Baroque’s growing dynamism.
Orihuela identifies the author by his technique: his tight approach, with a succession of flat brushstrokes intermittently broken by more impasto touches that convey the reflection of light entering from the left. As was often the case with this artist, there is a curious manner of delimiting the profiles of certain elements with thicker, more insistent lines that emphasize their reality with greater vigor (Text drawn from Luna, J. J.: El bodegón español en el Prado. De Van der Hamen a Goya, Museo Nacional del Prado, 2008, p. 70).
