Vision and Distortion in Cézanne's 'Still Life with Plaster Cupid'

In this painting, Cézanne depicts a corner of his studio dominated by a plaster cast of a seventeenth-century Baroque Cupid.

In the foreground, the statue stands on a table strewn with half a dozen apples and several onions.

The floor behind the table reveals an uncertainty in the planar composition, as it appears to curve up behind the table.

Depictions of the real fruit on the studio table and the ones painted on the propped-up canvas become virtually indistinguishable, creating an ambiguous and paradoxical relationship.

This sprouting onion sits at an interesting point in the pictorial composition. It exists in the liminal space, where illusion and reality are blurred, acting as a transition between these two spaces.

The stem appears almost as if it has been painted on the propped-up canvas. 

While Cézanne was known to contour as a way of highlighting where one form ended and another began, he provides no precise contouring around the onion.

The uncertainty of the space is further enhanced by this subtle red line between the onion and its green stem, which perfectly aligns with the bottom of the propped-up canvas.

In the top right-hand corner, there is another painting within the painting, in this case of a plaster-cast sculpture different from Cupid. 

By challenging perception in this still-life, Cézanne draws attention to the act of painting itself and to the ways in which we comprehend reality.