In 1771, Luis Meléndez delivered his third petition for the post of court painter to Charles III. In it, he described a commission he was working on for the Prince of Asturias: forty-four still life paintings depicting the four seasons through Spain’s varied foodstuffs. Meléndez wrote that he had only delivered thirty-seven of the paintings because he did not have the means to continue the series nor enough money to feed himself.
Meléndez (1716–1780) had fallen low indeed after a promising start. In 1745, he had been admitted first among twelve students to Madrid’s new Royal Academy of Fine Arts (founded by his father). He captured this moment in his 1746 self-portrait, exuding capability and confidence with just a hint of melancholy. Within the next two years, his father was stripped of his title of Master Director. Meléndez was expelled. In spite of his repeated petitions, he never obtained a post as court painter. A month before he died, he submitted a Declaration of Poverty. In a 1972 article, Eleanor Tufts, a Meléndez scholar, included a transcription of this document, a last will and testament written in humility and resignation.
Tufts’s groundbreaking research on Meléndez has been continued by Trinity College’s Peter Cherry. In his perceptive catalogue essay, Cherry describes Meléndez’s encyclopedic approach to Spain’s comestibles as “a traditional justification of artistic virtuosity, which may, after all, be the overriding theme of the [Asturias] series.”
Meléndez’s bodegones(kitchen scene still lifes) are related to