Luis Meléndez
Luis Meléndez was a still-life painter in 18th-century Spain and, as you can see here, one of the best ones in Europe of his time. Meléndez had an amazing ability to capture the essence of everyday objects, which is evident in the precise details and lifelike textures he creates. The lighting, typically emanating from the left, highlights his exceptional use of color and shading. A bone-handled kitchen knife juts out from the wooden tabletop, drawing the viewer's eye along a zigzag path from a plate of figs to crusty bread, a small barrel, a wine flask, and finally to a cork cooler. This cooler, constructed with wooden staves and featuring a copper-handled container, is a recurring object in his still lifes. Additionally, the ceramic dish with an undulating rim, identified as de castañuela from the Talavera region of Spain, is another element often found in Meléndez’s kitchen settings. The painting's textures—the leathery skin of the figs, the crusty bread, the wood grain, cork, and the gleam of glass and copper—demonstrate his unparalleled skill in rendering contrasting materials through the fluidity of oil paint.
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