Still Life with Dog and Fruit, Cristoforo Monari

Episode 110. I’m David Cateforis with another Art Minute from the Spencer Museum of Art. The Spencer collection features a large still-life by Cristoforo Munari, a painter working in Rome at the turn of the eighteenth century. Munari presents the viewer with a profusion of objects, artfully arranged in a fashion reminiscent of seventeenth-century Dutch still lifes. Oranges, lemons, and a porcelain bowl fill a pewter platter set atop a chunk of a classical cornice decorated with an egg and dart motif. Glass and metal vessels, a platter overflowing with crawfish, and a draped purple cloth further populate the picture, while a dog sleepily stares at the viewer from the lower right corner of the painting. Munari primarily worked in Italy, though his style shows the influence of a wide array of European painters. Like many Dutch and German artists, Munari paints in a fine manner, carefully delineating the texture of a lemon peel in such a highly naturalistic manner that it seems almost tangible. Further, the work shows the influence of Italian and Spanish artists in the strong contrast of light and dark, known as tenebrism, and in the use of a bit of classical architecture as a table for the still-life objects. With thanks to Ellen O’Neil Rife for her text, from the Spencer Museum of Art, I’m David Cateforis.

The artist is Christoforo Monari, born 1667 in Reggio Emilia, Present day Italy, died Pisa, present day Italy. The title of the work is Still Life with Dog and Fruit, created in the late 1600s to the early 1700s. The work is made with oil on canvas.

Still Life with Dog and Fruit is a painting about four and half feet tall and three feet wide. It shows a table strewn with lemons and oranges in metal and ceramic dishes on a table. Several lemons have been cut, exposing thick white rind around greenish flesh. Several pieces of peel lie beside the platter. Some lemons and an orange still have their leaves attached. Next to the tray of fruit is a metal dish holding bright reddish-orange shellfish, possibly prawns. A crystal wine glass with an elaborate stem holds a pale liquid and gleams behind the prawns. Also on the table is a variety of serving dishes and storage jars. A white cloth is crumpled between them. Two terracotta jug-like vessels sit in shadow behind the fruit, and a Chinese porcelain bowl with white and blue decoration cradles one of the lemons. Beside the table, an open wine bottle rests in a wooden bucket, wrapped in a cloth. At the lower right corner of the scene, a black and white dog is lying with its chin on its paws, mostly in shadow under the table. The dog looks up, seemingly right at the viewer.

Monari produced grandly scaled paintings depicting a wealth of precious objects from near and far. Well-suited to the elegant apartments of his patrons, the canvases decorated living spaces along with other fine objects meant to attest to the owner’s affluence and social status. This example illustrates the market demand for paintings juxtaposing natural elements with objects from distant locations and cultures: oranges and lemons from the Mediterranean, porcelain from China, Netherlandish replications of blue and white vessels of the Far East, rust-colored pottery from Mexico or the Iberian Peninsula. A single still life could function in the place of several objects. The collection of those objects in paint reflected the owner’s appetite for refined and worldly items. Gazing sleepily from under the table, the dog invites the viewer to partake in the food and wine, which delight the senses through their skillful rendering.

Take a minute to think quietly about this painting. There is a lot to notice. What do you think the dog is thinking? Paintings like this one that show an arrangement of objects are called “still life,” because they usually don’t have anything in them that can move. This one is an exception! About the art This painting shows objects from all over the world together in one place. There are oranges and lemons from countries around the Mediterranean Sea. There are blue and white dishes that were made in Northern Europe but were inspired by dishes that were made in China. There is also terracotta pottery from Spain or Mexico. About the animal The dog in this painting is similar to several kinds of European sheepdogs that were used to herd sheep up into the mountains during the summer and into the lower valleys in the winter.