Born: 1578, Italy
Died: 1630
Country most active: Italy
Also known as: NA
The following is republished from the National Gallery of Art (US). This piece falls under under public domain, as copyright does not apply to “any work of the U.S. Government” where “a work prepared by an officer or employee of the U.S. Government as part of that person’s official duties” (See, 17 U.S.C. §§ 101, 105).
Fede Galizia was born in Northern Italy. Her father Nunzio Galizia, a miniaturist and metalworker, probably taught her how to paint. Little else is known about Fede Galizia’s life, but writings from the time describe her as a prodigy. She made some of her earliest known works when she was only a teenager. She lived and worked in Milan.
While Galizia painted portraits and religious scenes, she was also a pioneer of still lifes. This genre, in which objects like fruits or flowers are depicted on their own, is familiar to us now. But in the early 17th century, this was an entirely new subject for Italian artists. The painter Caravaggio popularized the style after making his Basket of Fruit around 1600.
Galizia made quite a few still lifes. She painted Still Life of Apples, Pears, Cucumbers, Figs, and a Melon—a new addition to our collection—in her final years, around 1625 to 1630.
Galizia’s life-like painting of a bounty of fruits and vegetables carried both religious and scientific meaning.
Milan was a center of the Catholic reformation movement, which drove a market for art representing the beauty of the heavenly/religious realm. It was also a center of science. With the recent invention of the microscope, scientists were taking a closer look at the natural world.
Galizia painted every element with painstaking detail. The leaves of the apple stem rest on the table. Knobby cucumbers are stacked in a pile in the center of the scene. We can see fruit through weave of the wicker basket. But there are also indications that this delicious spread won’t stay ripe for long—a pear and apple show spots of rot. Flies rest on an apple in the lower left and in the basket.