Still Life

Pieter Claesz. is among the most outstanding representatives of Haarlem still-life painting, having specialized in meal scenes. The Bremen picture shows a light meal that has been finished. The few dishes and utensils stand shoved together on the tablecloth. They have been rendered in greenish-gray and silver tones, and the way the light falls is used to describe them minutely in all their surface details. Beyond the joy of aesthetics, this painting is imbued with a profound symbolism, which Claesz.’s contemporaries knew how to interpret: The wine and bread represent the Eucharist; the currants stand for the blood of Christ and point to the Passion. The herring and beer contrast as nourishment during fasting to the juicy ham, to which a sharp knife points. Thus, Claesz. has assembled motifs of asceticism and gluttony, in this way making fasting, as a means of eschewing temptation, the actual topic of his painting.