Seventeenth-Century Netherlandish Still-Life Painting

Still life did not come into its own as an independent genre of European painting until the seventeenth century, when The Netherlands enjoyed its most abundant flowering. The Protestant Reformation’s impact undercutting Catholic church patronage spurred the development of secular subjects in the nascent Dutch Republic, where, in the first open art market, concurrent with the rise of landscape and genre (scenes of daily life) painting, still life enjoyed wide popularity and significant valuation that defied its lowly status in Italianate art theory. Some Haarlem painters specialized early on in tabletop “banquet” and “breakfast” pieces (van Schooten, van Dijck, then Claesz and Heda), while flower painting became popular around Middelburg (the Bosschaerts, van der Ast); by mid-century, Amsterdam hosted a perfect storm of painters, with still-life masters producing opulent displays later dubbed pronkstilleven (Kalf, van Aelst). Other artists focused on nature subjects both at home (Marseus, Mignon), and abroad (Eckhout, Merian), or became fascinated with the visual deceptions of trompe l’oeil (Hoogstraten, Gijsbrechts). Many subgenres of still life emerged, featuring game (the Weenixes), fish (van Beyeren), or the sobering reminders of death called vanitas (Steenwijck), while flower painting continued throughout the century and into the next (Ruysch, van Huysum). Yet in the southern Netherlands, too, though remaining under Spanish Catholic rule, still life evolved, there out of 16th-century Antwerp kitchen and market scenes (Aertsen, Beuckelaer), so that Flemish painters developed larger, more complex scenes rich with market produce (Snyders) and imposing hunting pieces (Fyt). Not all Flemish painters worked large however: Jan “Velvet” Brueghel crafted tiny, precious flower pieces, while Clara Peeters’s small panels were seminal for many types of still life in both north and south. Jan Davidsz de Heem also traversed this border: born in Dutch Utrecht but active also in Flemish Antwerp, he blended Dutch detail with Flemish grandiloquence to become by many estimates the premier still-life master of his time. “Still-standing things” had been represented in other kinds of pictures before still-life proper, of course: often foodstuffs and other objects in religious paintings. Consequently, some interpreters see moralizing symbolism lingering in Netherlandish still life, though debates over meaning long consumed the literature. Emphasis on Dutch art’s descriptive interests challenged this view, while subsequent investigations have probed socioeconomic and phenomenological questions. Most scholars today agree on more multivalent readings of Dutch and Flemish still life alike. And come into their own they have, as copious literature attests!