26 novembre 2017
Jan Davidsz de Heem at The Metropolitan Museum of Art
Jan Davidsz de Heem (Dutch, Utrecht 1606–1683/84 Antwerp), Still Life with a Glass and Oysters, ca. 1640. Oil on wood, 9 7/8 x 7 1/2 in. (25.1 x 19.1 cm). Purchase, 1871, 71.78 © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
De Heem's earliest paintings are precocious fruit pieces produced in his native Utrecht under the influence of Balthasar van der Ast. He moved to Leiden about 1626 and to Antwerp ten years later. This panel of about 1640 is a simple paean to bacchic pleasure, and to textures and light.
Jan Davidsz de Heem (Dutch, Utrecht 1606–1683/84 Antwerp), Still Life: A Banqueting Scene, probably ca. 1640–41. Oil on canvas, 53 1/4 x 73 in. (135.3 x 185.4 cm). Charles B. Curtis Fund, 1912, 12.195 © The Metropolitan Museum of Art.
The attribution of this large and luxurious still life has gone back and forth between Jan de Heem and his followers, but the painting was most likely painted by De Heem himself about 1640–41 in Antwerp, where he moved from Leiden in the mid-1630s. The scale, palatial setting, and oversized motifs are consistent with Flemish taste. The provincial clock intrudes with its unwelcome message (life is fleeting), like a country preacher sitting down to dinner at Versailles.
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