PIERRE DUPUIS
Monfort l’Amaury, 1610 – Paris, 1682
Still life
oil on canvas, cm 86×132
This still life painting, characterized by clear and luminous forms, richly depicts summer fruits arranged on a classical-style stone table. The display of fruit is staged against the dark background of a sideboard, upon which glass jugs and drinking vessels are standing, whilst to the left, suggesting a perspectival wing, there opens a beautiful mist-shrouded landscape. The depiction is enriched by a sumptuous drapery, whose shade grazes a ceremonial plate placed vertically against the wall.
The painting has been attributed by Alberto Cottino to the French painter Pierre Dupuis, an artist who spent part of his youth in Italy – like many of his generation, he undertook an extended study trip through the Italian Peninsula, particularly in Rome where he sojourned approximately between 1630 and 1640. There, the painter came into contact with the local still-life painting specialist Agostino Verrocchi.
As Cottino has noted, our painting is closely related to a composition by Dupuis published a few years ago as a work of the artist’s full maturity, executed after 1660, of which our work essentially repeats the composition but with some slight modifications. These differences are sufficient to regard our painting as a later version of the latter work, possibly painted by Dupuis himself perhaps with the assistance of a pupil, as suggested by the slightly more schematic execution observed by the scholar.