Hidden Secrets: Jan Davidsz. de Heem's genre elevating still life | Christie's скачать в хорошем качестве

Hidden Secrets: Jan Davidsz. de Heem's genre elevating still life | Christie's

Discover the secrets hidden in the canvas of this exquisitely detailed and flamboyant still life by baroque Old Master, Jan Davidsz. de Heem. In the Netherlands in the 17th century, the pronkstilleven — a huge, sumptuous still life — was the ultimate badge of wealth and status, and no one made them better than de Heem. One of his finest works, depicting all manner of fruit, pewter, crayfish and shrimps, is offered in our Old Masters Evening Sale on 1 July Measuring just over a metre wide, and described in Fred G. Meijer’s recent catalogue raisonné as the artist’s ‘core work’ of that year, the picture reveals, from behind a drawn-back, dark-red tasselled curtain, a table laid with a cut-open fruit pie, a bread roll, an oyster, a peeled lemon, oranges, cherries, plums, peaches, apricots and black grapes. There are also pewter plates, an upturned spoon and a Wanli porcelain dish, which contains crayfish and shrimps. On the right is a bottle casket with a silver tazza on top. Next to it is a silver ewer with a spout in the form of a goose ridden by a putto, a neck in the shape of a bearded man’s head and a handle consisting of two satyrs. To the left is a tall wine glass and a silver-gilt cup-and-cover. In the middle is a rummer of white wine. Look closer, though, and — thanks to its immaculate condition — the work reveals even more of de Heem’s ingenuity. A single spoilt grape hints at the fragility of life. Caterpillars traverse tiny holes in the leaves in preparation for their metamorphosis. And in the bulbous glass of the wine beaker, the reflection of the artist’s leaded studio windows can be made out, with the spire of Antwerp’s cathedral just visible beyond. Some art historians have even suggested that the central cartouche of the gilt cup shows the reverse of a canvas on an easel, while the glass body of the ewer reflects the artist himself, illuminated by a candle and surrounded by books. Having such an array of objects packed into such a tight pictorial space enabled de Heem to display the full range of his capabilities, from the delicate transparency of glass to the bloom of grapes, the fuzz of a peach and the nubbly rind of a peeled lemon. The work operated as a calling card of sorts.