Fish on plate and jug

The still life Fish on plate and jug, characterized by a ceramic decorated with floral motifs, does not belong to Carditello's original collection of 1792.

The work reached the Royal Site only in 1817, when it was placed in the small Room painted in a “Calicut straw yellow” colour; in 1880 it was moved to the West Entrance Hall.

Part of the series of small paintings produced by Giacomo Nani in his youth, the canvas celebrates the simple daily life of Naples, where ceramics occupied a prominent place.

It was precisely to ceramics that Nani dedicated his last production, since – as Bernardo De Dominici recounts – around the 1740s the painter was engaged in the decoration of the apartment of Charles of Bourbon, for whom he painted various hunting and «other gallantries that are His Majesty's pleasure».

In this period, in fact, Nani was also chosen by the sovereign for the decoration of the ceramics produced by the new Capodimonte Porcelain Factory, whose valuable production s scattered in various Neapolitan museums and is still little-known today.