September beauty

• By Daphne Caruana Galizia

I first saw this painting – or rather, a picture of it – at a lecture last summer given by John T. Spike, a noted historian of Italian art of the 15th century through to the 18th. He is an authority on the work of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio. Professor Spike attributes this painting, Still Life with Fruit on a Stone Ledge, to the great artist. While the audience speculated over this possibility, and Professor Spike gave the reasons for his conclusion, all I could think of was: “It was painted in September, somewhere in the southern or south-western Mediterranean”. I timidly put my hand up to make the observation and Professor Spike looked surprised. “I’d not thought of that,” he said. Yet this is very much a southern Mediterranean September painting. Fruit painted from life in those days had to be fruit in season. There was no refrigeration, and no forced crops, or crops air-lifted in from the other side of the world. These fruits, with all their quirks, were clearly painted from life and not from memory. Pomegranates ripen only in September, and those are the plums we call Settembrini. Grapes are at their best right now, it’s the season for melons and watermelons, and while the best of the summer peaches are gone, you will still find a few in September should you wish to paint them. The Italian gourd (qara twil) is there in all its curving glory, and the brown-skinned onions sit on large fig leaves, the figs themselves, which would have completed the picture, being conspicuously absent, a further clue as to the September-ness of this painting. Figs are dropping off the trees in August, but by September, they’re gone. Only one thing mystifies me still: the identity of the striped gourd in the background. Is it a large and unusual melon, or is it a pumpkin? If it’s a pumpkin, then that’s another September fruit in the collection; the farm-walls are lined thick with them right now. But if it’s a pumpkin, then that means the Caravaggio attribution may come undone. Caravaggio (1573-1610) may not have known what pumpkins were. They were first brought to Europe by the Spanish Conquistadors in the late 16th century, and the first country they got to in this part of the world was, of course, Spain – where, incidentally, this painting was discovered some years ago. Many more years were to pass before they were commonly grown throughout the Mediterranean region – common enough, that is, to be included with all the other common fruits of the area in a September still life.