Ludovico Soardi, attr. (Rimini, 1764 – post 1837)

Ludovico Soardi, attr. (Rimini, 1764 – after 1837)

Pair of Still Lifes

Oil on canvas, 112 x 153 cm – with frame, 133 x 170 cm

The two still lifes presented here, attributed to Ludovico Soardi (Rimini, 1764 – after 1837), represent a particularly interesting addition to the still-fragmentary understanding of Romagnolo production between the late 18th century and the first decades of the 19th century. In this region, still life was not a structured tradition but rather a genre practiced occasionally by individual figures. Within this context, the figures of Nicola Levoli and Carlo Magini emerge as primary influences; Soardi appears to look toward them, reinterpreting their models through a more updated and academic lens.

The first canvas, Still Life with Fish, Game, and Vegetables, is set within a dark environment, constructed through a dense brown background that absorbs light. The objects emerge thanks to a raking light entering diagonally from the side. Arranged on a barely perceptible table are silvery-fleshed fish, a bird, and two baskets overflowing with vegetables. The composition is carefully balanced: the taller, more abundant basket on the right offsets the more compact terracotta one on the left, while the fish and game create a stabilizing horizontal line. The attention to the tactile rendering of surfaces—the glossy scales, the soft feathers, the woven wicker—reveals a thin, polished brushwork, devoid of the material impasto characteristic of Levoli’s painting, suggesting a more controlled and academic approach.

The second canvas, Still Life with Vase of Flowers, Walnuts, Mortar, Plucked Turkey, and Salmon, expands the iconographic range by introducing a more complex setting. The table is positioned in front of a wooden plate rack and a wall where metal kitchenware hangs, elements that structure the space and provide perspectival depth. In the foreground, a bronze vase holds roses and buds in pinkish tones, placed alongside a stone mortar with a pestle and scattered walnuts, while a plucked bird, tied with string, lies next to a salmon fillet resting on a plate atop a copper vessel. The compositional order, far from being accidental, demonstrates an academic awareness in the arrangement of objects, organized according to a carefully weighed volumetric progression.

The iconographic comparison with the three canvases preserved at the Museo Stefano Bardini in Florence—previously attributed to Nicola Levoli and featuring fish, plucked turkeys, and mortars—is compelling. However, the works examined here reveal a different quality in the pictorial matter, which is smoother and more compact, along with a greater clarity in spatial construction; these elements support the attribution to Soardi. His activity, documented from at least 1787 and attested by his participation in the exhibitions of the Accademia di Belle Arti in Ravenna in 1835 and 1837, finds a firm stylistic anchor in eight canvases in a private collection in Fano (one of which is signed and dated 1810). Those works display a visual language entirely consistent with the pair examined here.

In the absence of a consolidated local tradition, Soardi appears to interpret the lessons of Levoli and Magini through an updated filter, characterized by a more modern taste in luministic rendering and an academic compositional discipline. Thus, these two canvases stand as significant testimonies of a Romagnolo variation of the still life, capable of blending descriptive naturalism with a search for formal balance and executive refinement.

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