1618
unspecified
From the collection of Cleveland Museum of Art
Still Life with Meat, Fish, Vegetables, and Fruit is a 1618 unspecified by Jacob van Hulsdonck, a Baroque work, depicting Food, held at Cleveland Museum of Art.
This painting shows a table piled with meat, fish, vegetables, and fruit. A shiny glass is tipped over. A half-eaten peach sits next to a blue-and-white bowl from China. The artist painted food so real you almost smell it. A fly lands on a raspberry, and a caterpillar crawls over a leaf—hints that dinner just ended. Look at how light hits the silver plate. For more like this, check Jacob van Hulsdonck at the Cleveland Museum of Art.
Jacob van Hulsdonck depicted a colorful array of foods, and tablewares ranging from an earthenware trencher to delicate Chinese porcelain—an expensive luxury made possible by international trade. For seventeenth-century viewers, the quantity and variety of foods would have represented a utopian world without scarcity or hunger. Partially eaten food and an overturned glass suggest that diners have just departed, leaving insects to explore the remains.
Hulsdonck thoughtfully included condiments here: butter, lemon, parsley for the trotters, and a dab of mustard for the ham.
Read the full account in the museum source.
Jacob van Hulsdonck or Jan van Hulsdonck (1582, Antwerp – 1647, Antwerp), was a Flemish painter who played a role in the early development of the genre of still lifes of fruit, banquets and flowers.
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