Eberhard Keil - Bernardo Monsú

EBERHARD KEIL "BERNARDO MONSÚ" (Helsingör, 1624-Rome, 1687).
"Allegory of autumn or taste".
Oil on canvas. Relined.
Measurements: 96 x 77 cm.
The present work represents an allegory of Autumn linked to the world of the senses and the enjoyment of wine, a recurring theme in the genre painting of the seventeenth century. The scene, of a festive and moralizing character, symbolically alludes to taste, smell, touch, sight and hearing, through the interaction of the characters around the wine and the shared sensory experience, within a composition of strong narrative character. The canvas finds a direct reference in a work preserved in the Musée des Beaux-Arts de La Rochelle, reproduced in M. Heimburger's monograph dedicated to Bernardo Keilhau, which documents the diffusion of this model in different versions and workshop replicas. It is also related to variants preserved in private and public collections, such as those from the surroundings of the Palazzo Tabarino Montechiri, considered workshop versions of the same series.
Eberhard Keil, initially trained in Denmark with Morten van Steenwinkel, completed his apprenticeship in the workshop of Rembrandt van Rijn in Amsterdam, a decisive experience in shaping his pictorial language. After his first works on religious themes, he moved to Italy in 1651, where he adopted the name Monsù Bernardo and developed a genre painting deeply influenced by the bambocciante tradition.
In Italy, his style was enriched by contributions from artists such as Salvator Rosa, Antonio Amorosi and Giacomo Francesco Cipper, as well as by the naturalistic sensibility characteristic of painting popular scenes. His work is characterized by the close and humanized representation of peasants, the elderly and popular characters, captured in everyday gestures with great expressive truthfulness, without falling into the extreme dramatism of the most radical tenebrism.
His success was remarkable in the Italian artistic context, as witnessed by the biography dedicated by Filippo Baldinucci in his Notizie de' professori del disegno, which highlights his talent and his wide demand in the European market. His production is today preserved in important institutions such as the Prado Museum, the Academy Gallery in Vienna, the National Art Museum of Catalonia, the Uffizi Gallery or the Statens Museum for Kunst, among others.
The piece reflects the maturity of the artist in his Italian period, where he combines naturalistic observation with an allegorical language of moral and sensory roots. The composition, of great narrative richness, is part of a series of seasonal allegories that enjoyed notable success in his time, linked to the taste for genre scenes with symbolic content.