Bartolomeo Passerotti, The Fishmonger’s Shop, 1580sDescribing this work, art historian Sheila
Bartolomeo Passerotti, The Fishmonger’s Shop, 1580sDescribing this work, art historian Sheila McTighe writes: “A woman holds a rotund globefish behind the spherical head of an old man… This detail is most revealing, since the globefish was a rarity from the waters of the Nile, not meant for eating but highly sought after for display in natural history collections, precisely because of its alleged resemblance to a grotesque human head… as the naturalist Ulisse Aldrovandi noted, the globefish was an interesting rarity because of its monstrous resemblance to a human head… Here, the principle of that resemblance is turned against the old villano: the fish merely resembles humanity in a lower form, just as the peasant is only a grotesque version of the human.” (1)1. Sheila McTighe, “Foods and the Body in Italian Genre Paintings, about 1580: Campi, Passarotti, Carracci,” The Art Bulletin 86.2 (2004): 305-311. -- source link
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