Still life with fish and seafood
(c. 1630)
Medium
oil on canvas
Measurements
62.2 × 82.7 cm
Credit Line
National Gallery of Victoria, Melbourne
Presented by RCR Holdings Pty Ltd through the Australian Government's Cultural Gifts Program, 2025
Gallery location
16th & 17th Century Gallery - Painting and Sculpture
Mezzanine linked to Level 1, NGV International
About this work
Giovanni Battista Recco was a seventeenth-century painter of still lifes, belonging to the Neapolitan School. Depending upon the source, he was either the elder brother or the uncle of Giuseppe Recco, whom he in turn taught to paint. Giovanni Battista Recco mainly painted still lifes, fish, seafood and shellfish. According to Italian scholar Nicola Spinosa: ‘His naturalistic style, inspired by everyday life and Spanish painting, employed contrasting chiaroscuro and sophisticated effects of light and reflection, while remaining sensitive to the problems of colour’. This sea-themed still life offers a marvellous array of lobster, razor clams, shellfish, crabs and diverse species of fish, spilling out of and arranged before a wicker basket.