Still Life with Lemon, Oranges and Filled Roemer

Unique among the Dutch Still-life artists was Willem Kalf (1619 -1693), who demonstrated the freest approach to still life work in this epoch. His "Still Life with Lemon, Oranges and Filled Römer" (1663/64) shows his brilliant artistic reflection of the world of objects. The items shine like gems out of a practically mystical darkness. They seem to be modelled out of colour, not fixed in the hard and dry hold of fine painting. Instead, light and shadow provide them with a depth and physicality that would only be found in painting again in the later Still-life work of that splendid magician of colours, Jean-Baptiste-Siméon Chardin.