Galina Tomirdiaro
The State Hermitage Museum, Russia
The name of Luis Melendez is rarely found in the literature on the art in our country. For a long time this name wasn’t mentioned in the books published in the 20th century, even in special publications, dedicated to Spanish art, and in the studies, dedicated to still life. The name of Melendez began to appear only at the end of 20th century (the 1990s) and at the beginning of 21st century, for example, in fundamental work by T. P. Kaptereva (“Spain. History of Art”, 2003).
Russian spectator and art-lover in our country was able to see still lives by Luis Melendez only at the beginning of the 21st century at the exhibition “Prado in Hermitage”, which was opened from the 25th of February to the 29th of May 2011. There two pictures were exhibited: “Still life with part of salmon, lemon and three vessels” (1772) and “Still life with a box of chocolates, slice of bread and other things” (1770). At this temporal exposition sometimes I could see the reaction of visitors at these pictures by a painter not known to them. It was surprise, a wish to gaze at the paintings for a long time and to learn something about this master. Unfortunately, biographic information about this painter and his life is very scarce, it is incomplete and fragmentary. But, fortunately, the works by Luis Melendez survived in big quantity. Now it is possible to say that there are about forty of his still lives in the world. There is the information that beside still lives he painted portraits. Hovever, there is hardly any information about them. A self-portrait by the painter (1746) has survived. In foreign literature there is information about some works by the painter and about some exhibitions where his works were showed. The biggest part of works by Melendez is in the collection of Prado. The famous investigator of Spanish art and one of curators of Prado Juan de Luna, describing the period of Spanish art of 18th century, said that in this period of Carlos III’s reign the Spanish school began the renovation and reached new heights: Luis Melendez painted beautiful still lives, many of them for prince of Asturia, the future king Carlos IV. So, J. de Luna writes about big significance of L. Melendez for Spanish painting.