These compositions of sumptuous colour present simple fruit and flowers, mostly apples and chrysanthemums, dahlias and violets with a few carnations in carefully applied strokes of thick, rich paint to enhance the compact consistency of the fruit and the more or less faded petals. 

It was in his late maturity that Federico Zandomeneghi began to paint still lifes, possibly as a distraction from the increasingly demanding obligation, undertaken by contract with the dealer Paul Durand-Ruel père in 1894, to produce a substantial number of paintings and pastels of female figures in the privacy of their homes and, more rarely, at the theatre, in cafés or in the peace of the countryside. While the initial appearance of fruit and flowers in his works was therefore prompted by the need to enliven this multitude of female subjects, which had become repetitive over the years while maintaining intact its quality in formal and chromatic terms, he began to take up the genre in its own right at the dawn of the new century. 

These compositions of sumptuous colour present simple fruit and flowers, mostly apples and chrysanthemums, dahlias and violets with a few carnations in carefully applied strokes of thick, rich paint to enhance the compact consistency of the fruit and the more or less faded petals. The flowers are often presented in a vase with no other objects to distract the viewer’s contemplation. Less frequently, the painting includes an ornament, a cup or, as in this case, a woman’s glove, a vaguely sensual element, exquisitely evocative of enveloping intimacy, which appears also in the more or less contemporary Astri of 1914.¹ By comparison with the latter work, however, the painting in the Cerruti Collection, where the attention is focused on the bunch of flowers and the part of the glove visible, is imbued with subtle overtones of mystery that heighten its emotive quality. 

Zandomeneghi’s belief in the artistic value of his still lifes can be deduced from the letter to Vittorio Pica stating his intention to present more paintings of flowers at the 1914 Venice Biennale, where he was granted a room to himself.² On that occasion, when the works shown included a painting entitled Fiori e guanti,³ Pica noted the artist’s “admirable gift for handling colour” and compared the delight of his work to the “pleasure given to the lips by the flesh of strawberries and the granular texture of raspberries wet with dew”.⁴ This comment certainly applies to the exquisite colouring of Vaso di fiori con guanto (Vase of Flowers and Glove), where the bright red of the dahlias stands out against a nuanced range of hues from light lavender to violet. 

Silvestra Bietoletti 

Another work by Federico Zandomeneghi, the pastel on paper Avant le bal (Before the Ball), datable to the mid-1890s, is part of the personal collection of Andreina Cerruti, Francesco Federico’s sister and President of the Cerruti Foundation (fig. 1). The pastel was bought by Cerruti before 1993; in fact it appears, with the title Donna alla toeletta (Woman at Her Toilette), in the handwritten inventory drafted in June of that year. The work was hung in the “roses” bedrooom, together with the two by Zandomeneghi in the collection [Ed.]. 

¹ Padua 2016-17, p. 252, no. 104. 

² Dini 1989, p. 450. 

³ Venice 1914, p. 40, no. 18. 

⁴ V. Pica, “Mostra individuale di Federico Zandomeneghi”, in Venice 1914, p. 39.