20th century Spanish school, following 18th century Mallorcan models.
"Still life".
Oil on canvas.
Measurements: 80,5 x 101,5 x 2 cm.
Stylistically this still life follows closely the Majorcan models. The Mallorcan school of still lifes shows a strong influence of the Valencian one, although it had its own personality and must have enjoyed a certain importance, given the number of works that have reached our days. It developed mainly from the end of the 17th century and during the 18th century, with the appearance of the figure of Guillermo Mesquida (1625-1747), who raised the level of Mallorcan painting. He was the most famous painter of the Balearic Baroque and the absolute dominator of the artistic panorama between the end of the 17th century and the first half of the 18th century. He was an excellent painter of still lifes, although we do not have a single one of them today that we can attribute to him with absolute certainty. His biographers indicate that he was a pupil in Rome of the Italian Carlos Marata, a painter who had a great influence on the development of still life painting, as he collaborated with numerous specialists in this genre. Mesquida depicted fruit, animals and flowers in his works, and founded a workshop in Mallorca where numerous works were produced, some of which are still preserved today. His style would have been characterised by a great chromatic richness and a clear ostentatiousness and abundance of fruit and floral elements, traits that would be inherited by his followers of the Mallorcan school, as can be seen in this canvas. Thanks to Mesquida's influence, the Mallorcan still-life painters picked up Italian elements, especially Neapolitan and Roman, always combined with the influence of the Valencian school.