Still Life with Vase of Flowers, Partridges and Pears

( Pseudo-Hiepes)

The painter recently called Pseudo-Hiepes – to emphasize that he is indeed a Spanish artist, and in recognition of more than a century of confusion among Spanish connoisseurs as to his identity is currently the biggest mystery in the field of Spanish still-life painting. He has also been the object of much discussion among Italian art historians. In modern times, two of his works outside of Spain were wrongly attributed to Sánchez Cotán and Pedro de Camprobín in the 1970s. In the 1980s, responding to both these pictures – and to two others thought to be by the same hand – Italian art historians dubbed him the ‘Master of the Lombard Fruit Bowl’ believing that he was an early seventeenth-century Italian artist. In the early 1990s, when numerous examples of his work began to appear on the Spanish art market, he was briefly, and again wrongly, identified as Tomás Hiepes, perpetuating an error that had existed in Spain since at least 1870. In the 1995 London exhibition Spanish Still Life from Velázquez to Goya, it was argued that he was a prolific Spanish artist, and it was proposed that he be called Pseudo-Hiepes until such time as his true identity can be determined.

In reality he had quite a distinct personality from Hiepes’s and cannot be considered an imitator or follower of his. Yet there are points of similarity between the two artists – due perhaps mainly to their having worked in the same society at the same time – that make the past association of the two understandable. Pseudo-Hiepes seems to have had a very active workshop, since the quality of the still lifes that use his designs, most of which are large paintings measuring well over one meter in width, varies greatly. Today there are over forty works that can be shown to have emanated from this workshop. To consider his origins, one must take account of all these and not just the isolated examples upon which the discussion in Italy has been based. Exactly where Pseudo-Hiepes worked is hard to determine, but the date of his activity is surely much later than thought at first by Italian art historians, who argued that he was among the earliest of all still-life painters and interpreted as ‘protogenic’ those qualities understood as ‘provincial’.

Typical of Pseudo-Hiepes’s work at its best is Still Life with Ebonized Chest, Fruit and a Vase of Flowers (exhibited in the 1995 National Gallery, London, Spanish Still Life exhibition), one of a group of six still lifes in a Madrid private collection which were wrongly attributed to Hiepes in 1870. The objects are arranged on a red table-top trimmed with fringe and brass tacks. Among the objects is a small chest of drawers, or papelera, something that appears in dated still lifes by Hiepes, Pereda, Camprobín and other Spanish painters of the 1650s and 1660S. On top of it are two decorative jasper orbs and a sliced melon on a plate. Orbs of this kind on top of a papelera had also been by Hiepes in the 1650s. Melons sliced in this way were depicted by Hiepes, and this very same one is repeated in other still lifes by Pseudo-Hiepes (see the work catalogued below). In the foreground are a white openwork faïence fruit bowl, a ripe melon, a dead bird and a Spanish faïence vase of flowers. Both the melon on the table-top and the very same arrangement of flowers were used by Pseudo-Hiepes in other still lifes: it was indeed a characteristic of the artist and his workshop to repeat selected motifs, as well as entire compositions. Aside from its intense coloration and rather bland brushwork, one of the most prominent aspects of this still life – and of the artist’s style in general – is the strong shaft of light that bisects the background diagonally, in the manner of Italian Caravaggesque still lifes. When seen in multiple examples, this nearly ubiquitous feature is a bit disturbing, inasmuch as the dramatic contrast between light and dark is mostly confined to the flat background and does not extend atmospherically to the modeling of all the forms, which, although they cast rather strong shadows, arc illuminated by a more even light. Indeed, the background was entirely painted before any of the forms were added on top of it (the shaft of light can be seen cutting diagonally through the jasper orb at the left). Unusual in Spanish still lifes, this borrowing from Italian art is one of the aspects of the artist’s style that misled Italians into thinking he was one of theirs.

The dramatic contrast of light and shade is somewhat more successful in defining the ambience in another painting from the same set of six, the beautiful Still Life with Honeycomb, Fruit and a Vase of Flowers (Fig. 15.2), in which the objects are disposed in a more or less symmetrical arrangement on a free-standing stone pedestal with a carved foliate cornice. As in most of Pseudo-Hiepes’s still lifes, the objects of glass and ceramic have an almost generic character, as if they were made up rather than observed from actual things. The type of striped glass bottle at the right, filled with red wine, is typical of the artist’s work. It is decorated with white strips of opaque glass, called latticinio, a characteristic of products of the glass furnaces of Catalonia and Valencia. It occurs also in Hiepes’s still lifes but is not usually seen in those from Castile (see, for example, Fig. 14.1). Perhaps the most striking motif in this picture is the plate containing a molded white cheese, on top of which is a honeycomb with a rose stuck into it. It is characteristic of the modus operandi of Pseudo-Hiepes and his workshop that this motif was used in other works too. In one of them – definitely of lesser quality – a folded letter bears an inscription in Spanish dedicated to an official in the small mountainous town of Murillo de Gallego, near the border between Huesca and Zaragoza. This was surely not the seat of Pseudo-Hiepes, but rather an indication of the reach of his studio. Stuck into the bouquet of roses and lilies are two heavily-laden branches of a fruit tree – in this case a cherry tree – which arch outwards, filling the upper space of the composition. This is a device frequently employed by the artist. It can occur in fruit bowls also, as in the painting exhibited with this one in the New York show.

In seeking to understand the roots of Pseudo-Hiepes’s style, which in many ways seems alien to the mainstream of Spanish still-life painting, it is useful to focus on several of its distinctive features. Among them are the types of support on which the objects are arranged: the fringed table-top and the stone pedestal. The latter can be decorated with either a foliate design, as in the example above; a simpler, geometric design; or no design at all. But these are quite different from the cubic plinths of earlier Spanish painters. Recently a superb Italian painting, Still Life with Artichokes and a Parrot (Fig. 15.3), was misattributed to Pseudo-Hiepes in the London auction market, perhaps because of the diagonal shaft of light and the use of a pedestal with a cornice vaguely similar to those he employed. The auction house experts involved in cataloguing the picture must have been thinking of a work by Pseudo-Hiepes that has long been a focus of the speculation about his origins, Still Life with Artichokes and a Bowl of Fruit. As demonstrated elsewhere, both the artichokes and the fruit bowl in this painting were used by Pseudo-Hiepes or his workshop in several other still lifes, and the lighting and rather generic modeling are distinctively his. Other than the strong shaft of light that falls across the background, however, there is nothing that unites this painting with the Still Life with Artichokes and a Parrot recently sold in London. Not only is the elaborate cornice in the Italian painting richly observed in light and shadow, but the forms on top of the pedestal subtly emerge from the engulfing shadow that settles upon the support. Furthermore, the forms – especially those of the artichokes – are scrutinised by a searching eye that dwells on the particular in a way that the generalizing eye of Pseudo-Hiepes never does. But the mistake of relating these two paintings was not without meaning, because the format of Still Life with Artichokes and a Parrot resembles that of the Spaniard’s works – even if only in superficial ways – more closely than that of any other Italian painting. Understanding it could actually help us to understand the stylistic origins of Pseudo-Hiepes.

As it happens, Still Life with Artichokes and a Parrot has been an integral part of the scholarly dialogue among a veritable Who’s Who of Italian art historians aimed – valiantly but, as yet, with incomplete results -at making sense of the bewildering confusion of unsigned ‘Caravaggesque’ still lifes. The auction catalogue made no reference to this literature.” Much of the discussion has been devoted to the question of whether or not the picture and others related to it might have been painted by Giovanni Battista Crescenzi, the aristocrat, amateur painter and enthusiast of still-life painting who immigrated to the Spanish court in 1617 and, as a patron, exerted a certain influence on the development of the still life there, before his death in 1635. Since not a single painting by the dilettante Crescenzi is known, or probably ever will be, the question is a futile one. In fact, the Italians cannot agree on an attribution for this painting, which has recently been consigned to an anonymous follower of the Hartford Master. If it was painted in Rome, as most scholars agree that it was, one must ask the question of how Pseudo-Hiepes knew paintings like this. Was he there in his youth? Or had he seen similar pictures in Madrid, or elsewhere in Spain? We cannot now answer those questions. But the more important fact that we can be sure of is that his style is a completely denatured version of this formation in the same culture unthinkable.

Others have postulated a formation in Lombardy under the influence of Fede Galizia. But neither the diminutive scale of Galizia’s still lifes, nor their precious finish, would seem likely to have spawned a follower whose large, decorative canvases and facile execution are so alien to the very spirit of early Lombard still-life painting.

As the paintings catalogued below should demonstrate, Pseudo-Hiepes – whether he had traveled or not -probably worked in a large Spanish city in the third quarter of the seventeenth century. At that date – certainly in Madrid – he could have known almost any kind of Italian paintings, since nowhere else outside of Italy itself did they abound to such an extent and variety. Like Juan de Arellano, he may have operated what the Spanish call an obrador público, or open shop, where clients could come and buy still lifes that were painted by the master and his assistants following a set of formulas, and using a repertoire of motifs that were combined in various ways and repeated often. The uniform quality of the pedestals, table-tops and backgrounds, which were all completely painted before the objects, suggests that the workshop may have had specialists who performed those tasks. The facile, generic modeling of the objects in his pictures suggests that they were possibly painted from models or pattern books, not from the life. The much-vaunted Lombard fruit bowl was very likely one of these models. Other objects in the still lifes, though not very specifically observed, suggest by their general style ones manufactured no earlier than the middle of the seventeenth century. The fact that so many of the still lifes seem to have been sold in sets suggests that they were used as decorations in large houses.

This characteristic work by Pseudo-Hiepes is a symmetrical still life focusing on a flower arrangement in an ornate vase made of glazed ceramic with ormolu mounts. The vase is flanked on the left by two partridges and on the right by three pears. The upper part of the composition is filled with branches of plum and cherry that arch outwards from the vase of flowers. Testifying to the effectiveness of the artist’s abbreviated technique, the fruit on these branches glistens with palpability. The pedestal is the characteristic one with a carved foliate design, executed in exactly the same manner as that in the still life catalogued above.

A still life of similar design and nearly identical dimensions was sold at Edmund Peel y Asociados, Madrid, on 21 May 1991 (lot 10). The flower arrangement was different, except that the two irises at its top are seen in this picture as well. The vase was also different, being a bizarre, sculptured design colored entirely a bright blue and having the appearance of being a made, up fantasy. To the right of the vase were the same two pears seen at the right of this still life.

As an indication of the range in quality of the pictures emerging from Pseudo-Hiepes’s workshop, attention should be drawn to an even larger still life of similar design to this one, yet of inferior quality (Fig. 16.1). Although it uses the studio’s models, the entire picture seems to be by a different hand. The pedestal is rather chunkier, and the background is entirely black. It is not known if this is due to over-painting, which is certainly a possibility, or to a decision to omit the usual shaft of light. In a reference to past Spanish practice, a sprig with two oranges hangs from above at the right. Both the other items flanking the vase are also part of the artist’s workshop repertoire. The plate of salmon at the right was used in a still life of better quality that sold at Edmund Peel y Asociados, in Madrid, on 29 October 1991 (lot 12). The artichokes at the left, of course, are one of the most frequently used motifs from the workshop, appearing most conspicuously in the well-known Still Life with Artichokes and a Fruit Bowl (Fig. 15.4). Perhaps seeing them in this context instead of with the famous ‘Lombard fruit bowl’, they seem a little less related to Fede Galizia.

Provenance: Private collection, Spain (until 1946); Private collection, New York.

Matthiesen Gallery, An Eye on nature, 1998