Still Life, Pieter Claesz (1643)
This breakfast piece, a name given to simple groupings of foods and serving wares, conveys a delicate balance between surface and depth, horizontal and vertical. In spite of its subtle relationships in color and form, the grouping engages the viewer as the knife and plate protrude over the table edge to suggest a connection between the actual space of the observer and the fictional world that the artist has created. Painted depictions of daily objects whose beauty may fade, and foods that may spoil over time, were often intended to inspire meditation on the brevity of life and the immaterial nature of virtue.
