Still-Life with Melon and Pears

still-life

Luis Egidio Meléndez is the most important Spanish still-life painter of the 18th century. He saw his bodegones as part of an ambitious project. In a petition addressed to King Charles III in 1772, he wrote that he was planning a series of paintings for a cabinet that would illustrate all the different foodstuffs produced by the Spanish climate over the four seasons in the four elements.

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About the Artist

Luis Meléndez

1716 – 1780

Spanish still-life painter, active mainly in Madrid. He is regarded as the finest Spanish painter in his speciality in the 18 th century continuing the austere traditions of the 'bodegón' established by Sanchez Cotán, as well as Velázquez and Zurbarán. He is sometimes called 'the Spanish Chardin' but he spent much of his life in poverty. He was trained by his father and L. M. van Loo in Spain. He was van Loo's assistant 1742-48. He worked in Madrid and revisited Italy before 1775. His work is rare outside Spain, but there is an example in the National Gallery in London and the Louvre in Paris has a striking self-portrait, signed and dated 1746. The self-portrait is his earliest known work, in which he looks younger than thirty.

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