Attributed to Antonio Ponce

Attributed to ANTONIO PONCE (Valladolid, h. 1608-h. 1667)
"Still life".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Presents on the back label of the Board of Conservation of the Artistic Treasure.
Measurements: 70.5 x 128 cm; 87 x 144 cm (frame).
Made in oil on canvas, and currently relined, the painting presents a careful composition of pieces of game, fruits and vegetable elements arranged on a horizontal surface, in an organization that responds to the characteristic models of the Madrid still life of the seventeenth century. The scene is structured by means of a balanced arrangement of objects that combines the abundance of nature with a studied visual theatricality. The downed birds, represented with great attention to detail in the texture of the plumage, coexist with fruits and vegetables that provide chromatic and formal hallmarks. This coexistence of elements responds to a symbolic conception typical of the Baroque, in which the representation of the everyday acquires connotations of moral reflection on the transience of life.From the technical point of view, the work reveals the influence of the tenebrism of Caravaggesque roots, perceptible in the use of a directed lighting that models the volumes through strong hallmarks between light and shadow. This resource, inherited from his master Van der Hamen, is combined in Ponce's later stages with a more luminous and nuanced palette, a tendency that characterizes his evolution towards softer chromatic ranges and more balanced atmospheres.
The artist's career, active in Madrid and linked to important commissions such as those of the Buen Retiro Palace, as well as to the ephemeral decoration of court celebrations, places this work within a context of high demand for the still life genre at the Spanish court. In this sense, the painting not only responds to an aesthetic interest, but also to a visual culture in which the representation of still life acquired a symbolic, intellectual and decorative value. In 1624, Antonio Ponce entered as an apprentice in the workshop of Juan Van der Hamen, the most famous still life painter of the time. The influence of his master is revealed in his early paintings, with an arrangement on stone entablatures sometimes superimposed and the strong chiaroscuro lighting of Caravaggesque origin. As a still life painter he tackled a wide variety of subjects and formats, fruits and vegetables, as well as game and flowers, series of months and small cabinet paintings. From 1637 to 1638, Ponce worked in the Buen Retiro Palace (Madrid), built by King Philip IV. In July and August of 1649, he collaborated with a group of artists in the ephemeral decoration of the steps of the square and the stairs of the church of San Felipe el Real, as part of the celebrations of the entrance of Mariana of Austria. In the 1640s, he adopted lighter and brighter backgrounds that were tinged with soft hallmarks and a chromatic scale tending to gray.