MICHELANGELO MERISI known as CARAVAGGIO (circle of/Maestro di Hartford?) (Milan, 1571 - Porto Ercole, 1610) Lute player, with a vase of flowers, fruit, score and violin Oil on canvas, 88X108 cm Provenance: Rome, Collection B. Riccio London, Vitale Bloch Collection London, Edward Speelman (1973) London, Antiques Market (1975) Campione d'Italia, Silvano Lodi Collection Milan, Christie's, 7 June 2023, lot 113 (as a follower of Caravaggio) Exhibitions: Munich, Bayerische Staatsgemäldesammlungen, Alte Pinakothek, Italian Still Life, 1984-1985, p. 45, fig. 10 no. 13 (as Master of Hartford) Saitama, The Museum of Modern Art, Italian still life from three centuries, 1986, cat., p. 61, no. 10- then Tokyo, Seibu Museum of Art; Darumaya, Yomiuri Shimbun Museum of Art; Shimoseki, Shimoseki City Art Museum, 1987 Jerusalem, The Israel Museum of Art, Italian Still Life, 1994, cat., pp. 34-35, no. 10 (illustrated, as Attributable to Caravaggio) Tokyo, Seiji Togo Memorial Yasuda Kasai Museum of Art, Italian Still Life Painting, 2001, cat., p. 44, no. 7 (illustrated, as attributed to Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) Niigata, Niigata City Art Museum- Hokkaido, Hakodate Museum of Art; Toyama, Toyama Shimin Plaza Art Gallery; Ashikaga, Ashikaga Museum of Art; Yamagata, Yamagata Museum of Art, 2002 Bibliography: Zeri Archive, no. 44753 (as Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio) B. Nicolson, The International Caravaggesque Movement, Oxford 1979, no. 72 L. Salerno, Three Centuries of Italian Still Life. The Collection of Silvano Lodi, Florence 1984, pp. 44-47, no. 13 M. Marini, 1986, p. 14 (as Paolini) B. Nicolson, Caravaggism in Europe, Turin 1989, vol. I, p. 92- vol. II, no. 791 (as Caravaggesque unknown, French close to Caravaggesque Master 'K') M. Gregori, Caravaggio e i suoi, in La natura morta italiana tra Cinquecento e Settecento, exhibition catalogue edited by J. G. Prinz von Hohenzollern, Milan 2002, pp. 22-40, p. 29, fig. 10, footnote 76 (as Hartford Master) C. Whitfield, Prospero Orsi, interprète du Caravage, in Revue de l'art, 155, 1, 2007, pp. 9-19, pp. 11-12, ill. 6 C. Whitfield, The Eye of Caravaggio, London, 2011, p. 37, fig. 19 (as Prospero Orsi) G. Berra Luci, Riflessi, ombre e rifrazioni nella caraffa con fiori del ragazzo morso da un ramarro del Caravaggio, in Atti della Giornata di Studi Quesiti caravaggeschi, edited by P. Carofano, Pontedera 2014, pp. 11-39, fig. 25, footnote 53 (as attributed to Prospero Orsi) J. Mizzi (ed.), Reflections on Caravaggio's mirror, 2012, p. 41 D. Fabris, Caravaggio's Third Lute Player, in Grenzüberschreitungen. Musik im interdisziplinären Diskurs, edited by Raymond Ammann, Ferdinando Celestini, Lukas Christensen, Innsbruck, University of Innsbruck Pres, 2014, pp. 23-50, fig. 5, note 32 L. Calenne, Prima ricerche su Orazio Zecca da Montefortino (oggi Artena) Dalla bottega del Cavalier d'Arpino a quella di Francesco Nappi, Rome 2016, p. 126, fig. 44a, footnote 40 (as Master of Hartford and Cesare Rossetti (?) N. Roio, L'esordio romano di Caravaggio: nuove tracce dalla biografia di Mario Minniti (e una attribuzione), in About Art, 18 July 2017, fig. 1 (as Mario Minniti) N. Roio, Caravaggio, the problem of the 'Master of the Hartford Still Life' and the possible role of the Sicilians Mario Minniti and Pietro d'Asaro, in L'Arte di vivere l'Arte. Scritti in onore di Claudio Strinati, edited by P. di Loreto, Rome-Foligno 2018, pp. 383-394, fig. 1 The analysis of the painting firstly requires us to consider its being 'unfinished'. Observing the face, in fact, pencil marks transpire, while the fruit near the glass jug shows a sketchy rendering (cf. Salerno 1986). The composition, on the other hand, reveals its illustrative consonance with the Lute Players by Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio, now in the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg (from the Giustiniani collection, but a gift from Cardinal del Monte (cf. G. Baglione, Vite de' pittori, scultori et architetti dal tempo di Gregorio XIII nel 1572, al tempo di Urbano Ottavo nel 1642, Roma 1642, p. 136; M. Marini, Caravaggio pictor praestantissimus, Rome 2005, p. 398-99, n. 17) and the Metropolitan Museum in New York, which, according to critics, was always commissioned by Cardinal del Monte at a later date, although their chronology runs between 1594 and 1597 (cf. K. Christiansen, A Caravaggio rediscovered: the lute player, New York: The Metropolitan Museum of art, 1990; K. Christiansen, Some observations on the relationship between Caravaggio's two treatments of the lute-player, in The Burlington Magazine, 132 (1990), pp. 21-26). Having said this, the composition proposes the still life piece on the left of the young musician, while the violin placed in the foreground is on the opposite side. These variants and the 'unfinished' condition have invariably suggested that the work was a Caravaggio original, a theory also encouraged by the existence of other unfinished works such as the Buona Ventura in the Capitoline Museums (cf. Salerno 1986). However, critics have correctly assigned the canvas to an author belonging to the Lombard master's circle, proposing various attribution hypotheses over time. For example, Mina Gregori assigned it to the Hartford Master, by virtue of the beautiful carafe and the flowers that are so Caravaggio-like in their avoidance of courtly and decorative modes (cf. Gregori 2002). For Whitfield, on the other hand, the craftsman must be recognised as Prospero Orsi, Caravaggio's famous "turcimanno", a skilful composer of "grotesques" and recently raised to the role of possible candidate of the anonymous Hartford Master (cf. C. Strinati, La natura morta in Roma dopo Caravaggio, in L'anima e le cose. La natura morta nell'Italia pontificia nel XVII e XVIII secolo, exhibition catalogue edited by R. Battistini, B. Cleri, Fano 2001, p. 16; D. Dotti, in L'origine della natura morta in Italia. Caravaggio e il Maestro di Hartford, exhibition catalogue edited by A. Coliva, D. Dotti, Milan 2016, pp. 123-143). The English scholar's idea, therefore, would reinforce Gregori's hypothesis and we must remember that the latter, in the face of problematic works, often relied on the eye of Federico Zeri who, in this specific case, could boast an authoritative experience given his early and disruptive essay dedicated to Caravaggio's still lifes (cf. F. Zeri, Sull'esecuzione di nature morte nella bottega del Cavalier d'Arpino, e sulla presenza ivi del giovane Caravaggio, in Diari di lavoro 2, Turin 1976, pp. 92-103). Lastly, let us recall Nicosetta Roio's intervention that compares the production of Mario Minniti (Syracuse, 1577 - 1640), Merisi's young pupil and model, whose face can be recognised in the Ragazzo con la canestra di frutta (Boy with a Basket of Fruit), in Bacco (Bacchus) and, according to the scholar, in the young musician of the Lodi canvas (cf. Roio 2018). From this brief excursus, the substantial philological difficulty posed by Caravaggio's works and in particular the Lute Player Lodi becomes clear, but it is possible to say that the problem always revolves around the personality of the Hartford Master and the difficulty of giving him a precise name.