MANFREDI, BARTOLOMEO
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FRUIT-SELLER
At the end of the 1920s V.N.Lazarev attributed this work to Piero Paolo Bonzi, one of the leading masters of the Roman still life after Cavaraggio. The correct attribution was provided by V.E.Markova. It is most likely that the picture in the Pushkin Museum was the fruit of collaboration between two painters: one would have drawn the figure and the other the extremely beautiful still life. The composition of this canvas with a figure turned to the right gives us grounds for thinking that this work might have been one of a pair, of which the second part has perhaps not survived.
Provenance: in the collection of M.P.Kristi (Moscow) at the beginning of the 20th century; acquired by the Pushkin Museum from the 5th Proletarian (Rogozhsko-Simonovskii) Museum in 1924.