Georg Flegel (1566-1638), Meal with Bread and Sweetmeats, Oil on beechwood, 21.9 x 17.1 cm. Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: Artothek.

FRANKFURT.-Dewdrops on dainty petals, light glancing off precious silverware, candied confectionery in blue and white Chinese porcelain bowls, the soft plumage of a dead songbird, the pale hue of a skull – still lifes have not ceased to exercise their spell upon us to this day with their close-up views of inanimate, yet by no means lifeless objects reproduced with painterly finesse. However, still life painting was anything but a merely aesthetic affair, even if today’s viewer tends to perceive it as such. It reflects not only a feeling of transitoriness and a longing for redemption, but also the pleasure of visually representing exotic trading goods with which Dutch and other merchants made their fortunes. Assembling the superb holdings of the Städel Museum, the Hessisches Landesmuseum Darmstadt, and the Kunstmuseum Basel, the exhibition unfolds a spectrum of still life painting in the Netherlands and Germany from the late fifteenth to the late eighteenth centuries with more than ninety masterpieces by Jan Brueghel the Elder, Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Willem Kalf, Rachel Ruysch, Abraham Mignon, Georg Flegel, Jan Soreau, Gottfried von Wedigh, and Sebastian Stosskopf. This offers a panorama of the genre’s different varieties from prosaic pieces of the early seventeenth century to later works depicting things of splendor, from banquet still lifes to sumptuous bouquets and picturesque animal still lifes.

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Pieter Aertsen (1507/08 - 1575), Market Piece with Christ and the Adulteress, 1559, Oil on oakwood, 122.5 x 180.5 cm (height includes 34 cm added at top), Inscribed left on barrel “P A / 1559”. (between P and A a trident; only upper triangle of “A”). Städel Museum, Frankfurt am Main. Photo: Artothek