Blas de LEDESMA (active 1602-1614)

Still Life with Red Fruit

oil on canvas

36 x 44 inches (92 x 112 cm), inc. frame

Price: Sold

Literature:
Ramon Torres Martin, Blas de Ledesma y El Bodegon Espanol, Madrid, 1978.

Blas de Ledesma, was a Spanish painter in the reign of Philip III, who was one of the earliest practitioners of still-life paintings in Spain. He is recorded as having worked in Granada from 1602 to 1613, during which he designed the fresco decorations for the stucco vault of the Alhambra. In the present still-life, the finely wrought fruit and accompanying baskets are presented in a serene symmetry that recalls such fresco designs.

This fruit still life relates to one now in the collection of the High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Georgia, Basket of Cherries and Flowers. As Alfonso Perez Sanchez noted in regards to the High Museum painting, Ledesma was likely influenced by the acclaimed artist of the day, Sanchez Cotan (1560-1627), in the almost magical silence of the picture and its beautiful portrayal of light. Sanchez Cotan was himself said to be influenced by Caravaggio, by such works as his Artist’s Basket of Fruit (c. 1599) in the Biblioteca Ambrosiana. Indeed, the confidence of brush stroke—noted in the highlighted stems of the cherries, and the serrated leaves of the currents—adds a dynamism and a sense of volume to the work, which can be said to pay tribute to the Italian master.