Still Life History

Still life painting has roots stretching back to early Roman antiquity, but it truly blossomed in the Netherlands during the early 1600s — the era known as the Dutch–Flemish Golden Age. This flourishing took place within the broader Baroque period, when artists reveled in drama, detail, and dazzling displays of technical skill.

Still lifes became a showcase for painters to demonstrate their mastery of realism: the shimmer of pewter tableware, the intricate weave of embroidered cloth, the soft folds of linen, and the luscious textures of fruit and flowers were all opportunities to dazzle the viewer. Artists created literal cornucopias on canvas — lavish dinner and breakfast settings overflowing with abundance.

Yet beneath the sumptuous surfaces lay moral messages. Many still lifes carried a vanitas theme (from the Latin vanitas, meaning “vanity”), a genre that flourished in the Netherlands in the early 17th century. Vanitas paintings symbolized the brevity of life and the futility of earthly pleasures, urging viewers to reflect on mortality and repent. Originally, these symbols appeared on the backs of portraits during the late Renaissance — skulls, hourglasses, guttering candles — but by around 1550 vanitas still lifes had emerged as an independent genre. By 1620, they were a cultural phenomenon, particularly in Leiden, a Calvinist stronghold where moral rigor was emphasized.

Not all still lifes, however, were solemn sermons in oil. Artists such as Balthasar van der Ast and his pupils often created works intended for decoration rather than moral reflection. In a prosperous Dutch Republic with a rising middle class, art buyers delighted in images of flowers, fruits, and grapes — scenes that were simply pleasant to behold. These works eschewed skulls and hourglasses in favor of beauty and abundance, reflecting both the tastes and wealth of their patrons.

Although a few vanitas paintings include human figures, the vast majority are pure still lifes, composed of a familiar repertoire of symbolic objects. These typically fall into several categories:

• Arts and Sciences: books, maps, musical instruments

• Wealth and Power: purses, jewelry, gold vessels

• Earthly Pleasures: fine goblets, tobacco pipes, playing cards

• Death and Transience: skulls, clocks, extinguished or burning candles, soap bubbles, fading flowers

• Eternal Life: ears of corn, ivy, or laurel sprigs, symbolizing resurrection and immortality.

The earliest vanitas compositions were sober and restrained — often monochromatic — featuring only a few carefully chosen objects such as a book and a skull. These works, executed with meticulous precision, conveyed a powerful moral message. As the 17th century unfolded, however, vanitas paintings grew more elaborate: artists introduced a wider array of objects, brightened their palettes, and adopted more dynamic arrangements. Objects were frequently shown in deliberate disarray, evoking the inevitable collapse of worldly achievements.

Ironically, even as their moralizing content became more theatrical, vanitas paintings also became a stage for technical virtuosity. Artists delighted in rendering the textures of metal, glass, paper, and fabric with dazzling realism, without sacrificing artistic integrity. Masters such as David Bailly, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Willem Claesz. Heda, Pieter Potter, and Harmen and Pieter van Steenwyck elevated the genre to new artistic heights. The vanitas tradition also left a clear imprint on the iconography and technique of other contemporaries, including Rembrandt.

More broadly, the rise of still-life painting in the Northern and Spanish Netherlands reflected a cultural shift toward urbanization and the increasing value placed on domestic interiors, personal possessions, commerce, learning, and everyday pursuits. Floral still lifes, in particular, flourished during the early 1600s. Their exquisite craftsmanship and layered symbolism were aimed at a cultivated, discerning audience — one that delighted in both intellectual meaning and aesthetic pleasure.

Painters such as Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder, Balthasar van der Ast, Roelandt Savery, and Jacob Vosmaer frequently consulted herbals and other botanical references when composing their elaborate floral “bouquets.” These works, such as Vosmaer’s A Vase of Flowers, often brought together blooms from different countries—and even continents—into a single vase, depicted as if all were at their peak of blossoming simultaneously. For many elite collectors, including Emperor Rudolf II in Prague, a floral still life formed part of a cultivated private world. This world typically included a garden of rare specimens (which sometimes cost more than the paintings themselves), watercolor studies of unusual tulips and exotic flowers, and small libraries of botanical books and prints.

While floral still lifes thrived in Antwerp, Middelburg, and The Hague, other regions developed their own distinctive still-life traditions. In the mercantile city of Haarlem, painters like Floris van Dyck, Pieter Claesz, and Willem Claesz Heda specialized in the so-called monochrome “banquet” or “breakfast” still lifes. These works typically depicted familiar foods—ham, cheese, oysters, and bread—alongside glasses of wine or beer, carefully arranged on simple wooden tables. In Leiden, artists such as the young Jan Davidsz. de Heem and David Bailly excelled in vanitas still lifes, laden with moral symbolism.

Another subgenre, the “market” and “kitchen” still life, emerged earlier in mid-1500s Antwerp, pioneered by Pieter Aertsen and his pupil Joachim Beuckelaer. Aertsen later returned to Amsterdam, inspiring painters like Joachim and Peter Wtewael, whose Kitchen Scene adopts Aertsen’s sensual motifs, albeit with less subtlety.

By the 1650s and 1660s, as Amsterdam rose to prominence as the Netherlands’ social, political, and financial hub, still-life painters elevated the genre to new levels of luxury. Artists such as Abraham van Beyeren and Willem Kalf produced “fancy still lifes” that featured imported fruits, Chinese porcelain, Venetian glassware, and silver-gilt cups and trays, all bathed in glistening light and velvety atmospheres. Later flower painters—Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Willem van Aelst, Rachel Ruysch, and the highly influential Jan van Huysum—pushed the decorative and aesthetic qualities of still-life painting to their most sumptuous heights.

During the second half of the 17th century, a new focus emerged: still lifes of dead game, or “hunting trophies.” Works like Jan Weenix’s Falconer’s Bag (1695) portrayed aristocratic country life with lavish realism, often accompanied by scenes of live birds and animals, such as Melchior d’Hondecoeter’s Peacocks (1683).

Earlier in the century, this type of imagery was more typical of the Spanish Netherlands, where painters like Frans Snyders and his follower Jan Fyt turned scenes of fowl, hares, and deer into vibrant displays of color and texture—visual testaments to the wealth and lifestyle of those who owned sprawling estates.

By 1700, the distinctions between Dutch, Flemish, German, and French still-life traditions had begun to blur. Dutch painters worked for foreign courts, and the still-life market expanded across Europe. The genre’s legacy continued into the 18th century with French painters such as Jean Siméon Chardin and Jean-Baptiste Oudry, who carried forward and transformed the Netherlandish still-life tradition for new audiences.