2-742-227 - Heritage Art/Heritage Images

Still Life with Fish, Bread, and Kettle, c. 1772. Meléndez usually delighted in rendering the roundness of objects, so it is surprising that the complete forms of the brass kettle and tin cruet are not visible here. A possible explanation is that the canvas may have been cut a little at the top and on the right side. During the 1760s, after painting portraits and portrait miniatures with his father, Meléndez began to specialize in still lifes. Active mainly in Madrid, he is regarded as the finest Spanish still-life painter of the 18th century, but he spent much of his life in poverty.