Baroque Art

Sample Lesson - Introduction

Lesson 1.13: The Still-Life

Some still lives are more interesting than others.
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Another popular category of Dutch Golden Age painting was the still life. On the surface, a still life is just painting of inanimate objects like tasty food piled high on a table or someone's messy desk, assorted cluttered junk, or heaps of basset hound calendars.

Hypothetically, of course.

And yet, simple still lifes were all the rage. The explanation for its extreme popularity during the seventeenth century was pretty logical:

1. Dutch merchants make bank on international trade.
2. Dutch merchants begin to collect items from their trade (like Chinese porcelain or Indian spices).
3. Dutch merchants want to show off their cool stuff to their friends.
4. Dutch merchants pay artists to artfully show off their cool stuff in a painting.

Of course, if still life paintings were only a cool way to show off your stuff, we wouldn't still be talking about them centuries later. Intrigued? Press on.

Sample Lesson - Reading

Reading 1.1.13: If You Wanna Show Off, Show Off

Still life paintings—a painting that depicts inanimate objects—were even more popular in the Dutch Republic than paintings of everyday life. These paintings brought together different things like metal tureens, glass drinking cups, china, flowers, and all types of food. Lots of the stuff they showed were exotic, expensive goods brought back by the Dutch merchants trading all over the world.

For the Love of Accuracy

The artists who made still life paintings went far beyond merely observing objects and realistically portraying them in oils. They were inspired by the new philosophy of empiricism in this new age of Enlightenment. Empiricism encouraged careful objective study, experience, and observation over old-fashioned "believing."

Still life painters were meticulous in their work, aiming for scientific accuracy.

Paintings of flowers weren't just pretty pictures of green things with petals. This was legit. Rachel Ruysch, for example, knew the genus of each type of flower (and insect, and fruit) she painted, creating incredibly realistic and lush portraits like this: one:

Still life with Flowers. Rachel Ruysch. CE. Oil on canvas.
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A Bountiful and Exotic Table

Flowers, of course, weren't the only things depicted in the Dutch still life. Another common subject was food. While Shmoop likes to look at pictures of food because food porn is a great way to procrastinate, the Dutch had…well, other reasons for including pomegranates and apples and eggs and grapes. Certain foods were symbolic of particular things. These symbolic meaning weren't something the Dutch invented, but manipulating the symbolic meaning of a pomegranate (desire, fertility, or marriage) is useful for characterizing a scene. (Source)

Besides any food-related symbolic, paintings depicting exotic foods showed off how cultured the owner was. A painting like Still Life with Turkey Pie, painted in 1627 by Pieter Claesz (ca. 1597-1660), shows a bunch of different, expensive, and somewhat exotic objects. Exotic for the Dutch, that is.

Still Life with Turkey Pie. Pieter Claesz. 1627 CE, Oil on canvas.
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It's doubtful you missed it, but check out that fine turkey in the back there. Turkeys didn't exist in Europe at the time; It was strictly a bird from the Americas, so whoever's table this was oh-so very worldly. The turkey is shown a second time, too…as part of the pie. Claesz shows the turkey in all its feathered beauty and as a delicious baked good. The other food is also shown in the middle of being eaten. The oysters are shucked, the lemon in peeled.

Vanitas

Now spend a few minutes—yes, minutes—looking at this painting by Edwaert Collier (1640 – 1708) called Vanitas Still Life. A vanitas still life is a still life that's peppered with symbols of or reminders of change or death.

Fun stuff.

Look closely at every object in the painting and try to figure out what it is.

Vanitas Still Life. Edwaert Collier. 1662 CE. Oil on wood.
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What makes this a vanitas painting is that it invokes change. This one in particular is about travel. Not just any travel. Judging by that book on Jerusalem, and the map book, and globes, it's possibly a religious pilgrimage to the Holy Land. The other objects are exotic (read: not Dutch), like the elephant pendant and the strings of pearls. The golden chalice is really over-the-top in it's design. It has a bunch of natural forms—shells and coral—but the chalice itself isn't from nature. Still life painters loved to play with the distinction between natural and manmade objects and their overlaps.

Also noteworthy: that thing above the Jerusalem page with a handle is a money pouch. You needed to be flush with coin to afford to travel. And speaking of money, on the left, there's a coffer full of treasures. Next to that are two types of crowns—a Turkish headdress (that's the white turban with the feather) behind the crown of a Christian ruler (blue and gold, topped with an orb and cross). This brings us back to the idea of pilgrimage and even Crusade.

That's where the vanitas of the image comes in. People took religious pilgrimages in order to gain points for themselves in the afterlife. And yet, it looks like this person—whoever he was—got a lot more material things out of the pilgrimage than spiritual things. So the inevitability of death is implied in the act of pilgrimage, as is the futility of such acts in the face of greed. Woah, that's deep.

The point is that these still lives were interactive and interpretive. They weren't just a bunch of random objects.

Sample Lesson - Activity

Activity 1.13: DIY Still lifes

Still life are rife with meaning. You get it, but prove it.

Step One

Create your own still life. No artistic talent required. You can sketch it, draw it, animate in on the computer, cut out magazine pictures for a collage, or just arrange objects and snap a photograph. It's totally up to you. We just want you to prove to you know there's meaning behind every still life.

Make sure your still life makes a statement about who you are…or what you'd like us to think about you.

Are you sporty? Your still life could include a gym bag. Maybe it has a trophy casually poking out. Perhaps there's a medal draped nonchalantly tucked behind a bottle of Gatorade because you're not one to boast about your glory. If you're an artist, you can get all meta with your still life and depict the art space complete with all your gear. Maybe you're just a hungry soul and you want to commemorate your favorite foods. Give us a table piled high with your favorite chow.

Still life paintings are also about seeing, and looking, and the mechanics of those things. Distinguishing different textures, like shiny things, wet things, transparent things, was part of their specialty, so we encourage you to do that in your work as well.

Step Two

Write up 150 to 200 words explaining the items in your piece and the meaning behind them.

Here's what we'd say about our still life:

Our still life depicts the workspace of a devoted art history online teacher. We've included a computer surrounded by stacks of worn-out books, to demonstrate our long-standing commitment to academic excellence. We have some scribbled handwritten notes next to the computer. It shows that we are studious and diligent. Appearing just behind the glowing monitor of our computer is a small apple-shaped stress ball, reading "We Speak Student" because our work is our life.

And you get the idea. Notice how we not only stated what our still life included, but also explained the significance of its inclusion. We also made sure to note the texture or look of the items we chose. We didn't just use books, we used worn-out books.

When you're all finished, scan or snap a pic of your still life and upload it below along with your explanatory paragraph.