While the discreet presence of a snail reinforces enhances the naturalistic theme, it also adds a further level of interpretation to the work as a vanitas painting. 

This still life is a carefully studied and highly realistic composition of vegetables on a table. Those selected by the artist are characteristic of the winter diet, including cabbage, turnip, cardoon, leek, garlic and onion, to which he adds a goblet of delicately chased glass and a flask of wine. While the discreet presence of a snail reinforces enhances the naturalistic theme, it also adds a further level of interpretation to the work as a vanitas painting. As initially suggested by Federico Zeri, the author has been identified as the painter Tommaso “Mao” Salini, born in Rome in 1577 and described by his friend Giovanni Baglione as specialising, among other things, in “flowers and fruit and other things from life finely depicted”.¹ For some years now, the reconstruction of Salini’s catalogue as a painter of still lifes has been the subject of intense critical research aimed at tracking down the many works, especially floral compositions, mentioned in the inventories of illustrious collections such as those of Cardinal Ludovico Ludovisi, Cosimo II de’ Medici, Cardinale Scipione Borghese and Cassiano Dal Pozzo.² A reading of the inventory of 12 September 1625, drawn up on the artist’s death,³ has led scholars like Mina Gregori and Franco Moro to suggest a tentative identification of Salini as the Master of the Grotesque Vases.⁴ In this connection, Federico Zeri⁵ added a corpus of works associated with his late period, between 1620 and 1625, consisting primarily of still lifes of vegetables that revolve around a painting signed and dated “T. Salini F. 1621” previously in a private collection in Zurich and then in Turin. The signature is now regarded as modern but in any case credible as it was probably copied from an original.⁶ 

In this group, as Zeri points out, “the selection choice of fruit and vegetables is the typically archaic range of the earliest examples of this specific genre […] all winter crops, which means that the painting can be seen as a seasonal allegory”.⁷ He also observes that it is perhaps here that the “representation of silent, hidden animal life”⁸ perhaps appears for the first time, long before the work of artists like Marseus and Porpora. The first small group identified by Gregori and Zeri⁹ has expanded over the years to include other works thanks to the investigations of Luigi Salerno¹⁰ and above all Alberto Cottino.¹¹ According to the latter, some of these canvases should be attributed to the anonymous master “SBP”, who signed and dated a number of works - including the two still lifes of 1652 and 1655 - that continued the popularity of Salini’s invention past the middle of the 17th century.¹²

Simone Mattiello 

¹ Papi 2017, ad vocem.

² F. Paliaga, “Sui dipinti di genere con animali vivi attribuiti a Tommaso Salini”, in Carofano 2009, p. 118, notes 4 and 5.

³ Pegazzano 1998, pp. 131-146.

⁴ Gregori 1998, pp. 58-63; Moro 2011, pp. 107-144.

⁵ Zeri 1976, pp. 104-108.

⁶ A. Cottino, in Monte Santa Maria Tiberina 2017, pp. 16-19, cat. 1.

⁷ Zeri 1976, p. 106.

⁸ Ibid.

⁹ Gregori 1973, pp. 35-56; Zeri 1976, pp. 104-108.

¹⁰ Salerno 1984, pp. 76-79.

¹¹ A. Cottino, “Tommaso Salini”, in Porzio 1989, vol. II, p. 703; A. Cottino, “Ancora sulla natura morta romana di primo Seicento: un nuovo Tommaso Salini”, in Barbieri, Frascarelli 2010, pp. 64-67.

¹² A. Cottino, in Monte Santa Maria Tiberina 2017 cit.