Stop and look: Still Life with White Jug by Luis Meléndez
Luis Egidio Meléndez de Rivera Durazo y Santo Padre, to give him his full name, was the son of a Spanish artist who was one of the founders of the Royal Academy of Fine Arts in Madrid. Despite the grand associations of his father’s Academy, Luis was drawn to the lowlier genre of the bodegon (still-life), and persisted throughout much of his career in a sturdy, monumental style that celebrates the opulent forms of melons and loaves and ripe fruit.
He was a prolific painter in an impressive tradition. It had been initiated by seventeenth-century Spanish artists influenced by Dutch painters active when the Netherlands was part of the Habsburg Empire, centred in Madrid. Velásquez and Zurbarán quickly established a language of their own, evolving a way of looking at common, everyday objects with a boldness and objectivity which invests them with a grandeur that belies their familiarity and simplicity.
This canvas is an especially striking example of Luis’s characteristic manner. The dramatic lighting is typical, emphasising the sculptural values of the magnificent white pottery jug with its delicate scalloped patterns and voluptuously curling handles. Its companion bottle, by contrast, is hardly visible against the dark background except as a few glinting reflections. Between them is a metal pan, lying beside a typically realistic loaf of crusty bread. In front of these objects is a pile of miniature pears, scattered across the wooden table-top, which is itself an essay in minute observation.
In the presence of these lovingly, authoritatively rendered forms bathed in such theatrical light, we feel we are witnessing a drama acted out on the rough-hewn stage of a kitchen table. The various objects presented don’t need to be given human attributes: they possess their own potential for action. I would certainly like to know what happened to that superb white jug: does it now reside in a museum collection somewhere in Spain? But Meléndez has accorded it his own accolade, and this memorable painting is a fitting memorial to it.
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