Two new Italian paintings for the Bemberg Collection in Toulouse

28/4/26 - Acquisitions - Toulouse, Collection Bemberg - Continuing its policy of enriching the collections offered by Georges Bemberg, the Toulouse museum, now renamed the « Collection Bemberg », has for more than ten years been selecting major works acquired as opportunities arise on the art market. It is, for all practical purposes, an almost flawless record, as we have regularly noted with approval (see articles), and one can only be pleased to see the institution shopping at the Maastricht fair, whose scientific council members are habitual attendees. This year, it was the stand of the Canesso gallery that managed to capture their attention, and one can easily guess how they were seduced by this magnificent still life (ill. 1) which replaced the Antonio Campi panel we had mentioned [1] the Antonio Campi panel we had mentioned (see the article).

Everything is admirable in this painting, which reappeared at a sale in July 2013 at Sotheby’s in London, but had first been published in April 1985. The still lifes of the Genoese artist are now well known, and this one can be considered one of his most successful, if not the most successful, with this superb bouquet of pink and white peonies standing in its vase. As simple as it is effective, the composition remains very fresh, allowing one to admire fine impastos and a rich material quality, enhanced by a golden beige background. Its beautiful light bathes these flowers and fruits in luminous colours that fully reveal the painter’s talent, though he is better known for his figurative works. Strozzi as a still-life painter remains a relatively recent rediscovery, dating back to the 1980s, when Bertina Suida Manning published her reference article in The Burlington Magazine, and this historiographical adventure remains fascinating for the non-specialist. In 2002, the Canesso gallery presented another still life by Strozzi, to which Véronique Damian already devoted a notice praising the pictorial qualities of the painting (ill. 2), then linked to the « stupendous small painting of flowers and fruit » which has now joined the Pink City. The art historian noted the « rapid execution, the brushwork both impasted, transparent and evanescent on the contours of the forms, the brilliance of the composition symmetrically structured on either side of the central bouquet, not forgetting the neutral, light and luminous background ».

Hanging in Toulouse for two weeks [2], the still life acquired at the Maastricht fair should also be compared with another painting, which was shown at the exhibition « The Enigma of the Real » at the Galleria Corsini in 2019–2020. One indeed finds there the same peony vase — down to the smallest detail — though it appears somewhat duller, perhaps due to the condition of the canvas or the photograph. Rather amusingly, the entire left part of this painting — which belongs to the Michelangelo Poletti collection — reprises the composition of another still life by Strozzi, also sold at Sotheby’s in London in July 2013, but one day after the painting now on view at the Hôtel d’Assézat. Véronique Damian had already noted this migration of motifs from one painting to another in her 2002 catalogue, where the painter, like his workshop, could thus repeat them at will. Here there is no hesitation: the spontaneity of the brushwork confirms that this is indeed a masterpiece by Strozzi, which appeals to our contemporary eyes through its striking « modernity »: one might even imagine it hanging not far from the fruits by Fantin-Latour already on view at the Collection Bemberg.

The second painting acquired for Toulouse at the latest TEFAF is also a recent rediscovery with which readers of La Tribune de l’Art are now familiar, since it is a masterpiece (ill. 3) by the Maestro della tela jeans, an anonymous artist whose corpus was studied by Gerlinde Gruber and assembled by Maurizio Canesso in a memorable exhibition in autumn 2010 (see the article). Already well studied in its rich catalogue, it benefited from a new entry in which an iconographic hesitation emerges concerning its main figure: is it a man or a woman? It is rather hard to imagine the profession of barber being performed by a woman, especially as early as the seventeenth century, but it is clear that the scene raises questions. The Wildenstein gallery long owned this painting, then attributed to the Lorraine school, but it was nevertheless catalogued as a «seventeenth-century Neapolitan school» at Christie’s in New York on 23 January 2004, in the sale in which Maurizio Canesso purchased it. The auction house’s experts had already recognised its kinship with The Frugal Meal from the Museum of Fine Arts in Ghent, also attributed to the Maestro della tela jeans and published as such in the Canesso gallery catalogue. Ten days ago, we welcomed the entry of the Woman Begging with Two Children into the collections of the Pinacoteca cantonale Giovanni Züst (see the news item of 16/4/26), and one can therefore be pleased to see a French institution finally taking an interest in this fascinating artist. Finally, it should be recalled how inspired the Toulouse museum has been in its recent acquisitions of seventeenth-century paintings, since these last two join the two masterpieces by Nicolas Tournier (see the news items of 10/11/14 and 27/11/15) as well as The Christ Child Wounding Himself with a Crown of Thorns in a Landscape by Zurbarán (see the news item of 27/3/18), the Portrait of a Man by Paolini (see the news item of 17/5/18), Saint Sebastian by Preti (see the news item of 1/5/19) and Saint Jerome by Cantarini (see the news item of 26/4/20), also previously admired at TEFAF [3].