On: Still-Life Painting
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Still-life painting, or the depiction of inanimate objects, such as flowers and fruits, is thought to have originated in Greek painting of the late 4th century BC. Although no Greek still-life paintings survive, the works of a still-life artist named Piraikos were mentioned by the historian Pliny the Elder. Hellenistic works almost certainly influenced Roman still-life painting, which is splendidly represented by the wall paintings and mosaics (before A.D. 79) found at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Later Roman artists presumably continued to make still lifes, but the art was lost in the early Middle Ages and was not to reappear as an independent art form until the 16th century.
Toward the end of the Middle Ages, artists in general began to take a new interest in the simple and direct representation of the objective world. Italian 14th-century paintings, for example, display carefully delineated furnishings and decorative contents in the background of narrative scenes. These decorative motifs became even more elaborate in Italian Renaissance painting of the 15th century. Exactingly careful representations of furniture and artifacts, as well as of plants and animals, characterized the contemporary art of the Netherlands. From Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden to Hans Memling and Gerard David, 15th-century Flemish and Dutch artists frequently portrayed groupings of delicately painted objects as isolated still-life arrangements within their paintings. Typical of this trend is the cluster of flowers and vessels in the foreground of the nativity scene in Hugo van der Goes's Portinari Altarpiece (1474-76; Uffizi, Florence), in which each species of flower symbolizes a religious concept.
Independent still-life painting appeared in 14th- and 15th-century Italy as fresco or marquetry mural decorations and was further developed in both Italy and the northern European countries in the 16th century, particularly in the works of Giovanni da Udine and Pieter Aertsen. Italian still lifes tended to emphasize arrangements of fruits and flowers, culminating Caravaggio's extraordinary Basket of Fruit (c.1596; Pinacoteca Ambrosiana, Milan). In northern painting, Pieter Aertsen's great Butcher Stall (1551; University Museum, Uppsala, Sweden) led to more conventional arrangements of foodstuffs and meals on tables, especially in the work of the 17th century Dutch masters Jan Bruegel, Pieter Claesz, Willem Claesz Heda, and Willem Kalff, among others. Both Italian and Netherlandish painting influenced the evolution of a powerful still-life tradition in 17th-century Spain. Diego Velazquez developed the bodegon, or kitchen painting, whereas Francisco de Zurbaran, Juan Sanchez Cotan, and Luis Melendez developed highly individual styles of still life.
In 18th-century France, Jean Baptiste Oudry and Alexandre Francois Desportes made animal and game still-life paintings in the Netherlandish tradition. The great master of French still life, however, was Jean Baptiste Chardin, who reduced his subject matter to simple and homely elements painted with great clarity and a mastery of tone and light. Gustave Courbet, Edouard Manet, Odilon Redon, Pierre Auguste Renoir, and Vincent Van Gogh produced major examples of the form in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but Paul Cezanne is widely acclaimed as the finest still-life painter of the modern era. His studies of fruits and vegetables set on the broad planes of tabletops influenced the Fauve and cubist painters. Following Cezanne, Henri Matisse, Pablo Picasso, and Georges Braque made major contributions to the art of the still life in the 20th century.
Still-life painting, or the depiction of inanimate objects, such as flowers and fruits, is thought to have originated in Greek painting of the late 4th century BC. Although no Greek still-life paintings survive, the works of a still-life artist named Piraikos were mentioned by the historian Pliny the Elder. Hellenistic works almost certainly influenced Roman still-life painting, which is splendidly represented by the wall paintings and mosaics (before A.D. 79) found at Pompeii and Herculaneum. Later Roman artists presumably continued to make still lifes, but the art was lost in the early Middle Ages and was not to reappear as an independent art form until the 16th century.
Toward the end of the Middle Ages, artists in general began to take a new interest in the simple and direct representation of the objective world. Italian 14th-century paintings, for example, display carefully delineated furnishings and decorative contents in the background of narrative scenes. These decorative motifs became even more elaborate in Italian Renaissance painting of the 15th century. Exactingly careful representations of furniture and artifacts, as well as of plants and animals, characterized the contemporary art of the Netherlands. From Jan van Eyck and Rogier van der Weyden to Hans Memling and Gerard David, 15th-century Flemish and Dutch artists frequently portrayed groupings of delicately painted objects as isolated still-life arrangements within their paintings. Typical of this trend is the cluster of flowers and vessels in the foreground of the nativity scene in Hugo van der Goes's Portinari Altarpiece (1474-76; Uffizi, Florence), in which each species of flower symbolizes a religious concept.
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