Still-life painting is one of the oldest genres in history, yet it is often dismissed as too simple and not serious enough to be considered “high” art. Still, this genre has a long history spanning from antiquity. Still-life painting has evolved with human society, adapting to its needs and concerns. From Caravaggio’s contemporaries to quirky pop artists, painters of all generations found great expressive variety in still-life. Read on to learn more about the greatly underrated painting genre of still-life, its hidden meanings, and transformations.
1. Still-Life Existed From Antiquity
Still-life existed in Ancient Egypt, Greece, and Rome, albeit mostly with distinctive non-artistic functions. Food and objects painted on the walls of Ancient Egyptian tombs were offerings that the deceased would bring with them to the world of the dead. In Ancient Greece and Rome, still-life murals and mosaics served as signs and advertisements for barbers, food merchants, shoemakers, and other providers of goods and services. These images were not considered art in the sense we attribute to it today, but rather an almost despicable form of visual communication that required minimal skill.
Perhaps the most remarkable and famous ancient ruin, the city of Pompeii, still retains a lot of its artworks almost intact. Despite the general attitude towards still-life as a low genre, many such paintings decorated the walls of wealthy houses, illustrating the prosperity and hospitality of its owners. Some of these works employed a trompe l’oeil technique – a visual illusion that made the images appear three-dimensional and realistic. Most likely, such tricks were used to entertain the guests and manipulate the space.
2. Dutch Still-Life Turned Into a Language of Its Own
For centuries, still-lifes were used as decorative elements that augmented Medieval illuminated manuscripts, Bible-related artwork, or furniture design. Yet, the religious revolution that happened in Renaissance-era Northern Europe inverted this perception. The Protestant Reformation was a movement that opposed the politics of the Catholic Church and called for stricter rules of piety applied to believers and clergy alike. One of the principal points of the Protestant doctrine was the limitation (or sometimes, even direct ban) of religious imagery in churches to avoid idolatry. As a result, Dutch and German art started to develop “safer” forms of art like landscapes, still-lifes, and civil portraiture. John Calvin, one of the principal ideologists of the Reformation, believed every image should serve a didactic purpose. Thus, still-life painters developed a code behind their compositions that would carry messages of religious piety and strive for spiritual perfection.
Many symbols used in Dutch still-life paintings were ambiguous and allowed for multiple interpretations. An oyster, for instance, was an erotic symbol of lust. Still, its open shell was sometimes interpreted as the soul leaving the body and moving towards spiritual salvation. Flowers mostly referred to the insignificance of a short earthly life. Particularly, tulips—one of the most popular symbols of the Netherlands today—signalized one’s vain and uncontrollable spending habits, since growing them traditionally was a tiresome and expensive occupation. There were, however, exceptions: red poppies stood for Christ’s self-sacrifice, and the daffodil for the Virgin Mary.
3. Still-Lifes Existed to Remind You of Death
The most intellectual and symbolically rich form of still-life was vanitas, a specific type of composition seeking to convey the futility of earthly pleasures and the inevitability of death. Such compositions reminded the viewers of their sins and called for repentance, criticizing vanity, and selfishness. The most popular symbols found on vanitas paintings were skulls as symbols of death, hourglasses standing for the unstoppable passing of time, and often half-dead flowers.
Bottles of wine or smoking pipes were also frequent elements of vanitas still-life paintings and both referred to the sinful excesses of life. Personal possessions like jewelry or beauty tools like powder cases criticize one’s obsession with the appearance of their physical bodies, which would anyways soon decay in a grave. The only objects that vanitas painting recognized as eternal were works of art and writings. However, in many cases, the book pages and prints that were shown looked frayed and torn, as they were also subject to the passing of time.
4. Still-Life Means Dead Nature
The French word for still-life, adopted by some other languages, is nature morte. This translates as “dead nature.” Although still lifes indeed have plenty of dead things on them—hunters’ trophies, cut flowers, decaying fruit—there was still enough room for life and movement. Many such paintings included living animals, which also had their symbolic meanings.
Frequently, a viewer can notice beings like bugs, lizards, snails, and toads hiding behind the lush leaves of floral compositions or in fruit vases. Artists painted these beings not because they liked them that much – although, undoubtedly, some of them looked quite adorable. A crawling creature like a snail or a lizard was a code for the soul of a sinner, bound to earth with no way to achieve spiritual salvation. Monkeys usually stood for lust and excessive talking. Among the most frequent guests of still-life were cats that usually disrupted the composition’s serenity, attempting to steal a fish (a traditional symbol of Christian faith), or overturn a vase. Although possible interpretations of cats as symbols are numerous, generally we can read them as the embodiment of sinful impulses that are always lurking somewhere near.
5. Some Still-Lifes Are Not What They Seem
Despite the seemingly simple nature of a still-life painting, some artists made it more complicated by discreetly crossing it with other genres. The Dutch still-life painter Clara Peeters, one of the rare and outstanding women who made a name for themselves in the art field, added an element of self-portraiture to her images of fruit and cheeses. A silver knife in the foreground of the composition Still-Life with Cheeses, Almonds, and Pretzels, featured above, was inscribed with her name, and the metal lid of a jug reflected her face.
Other works, like the compositions of another Dutch master Pieter Aertsen, elegantly circumvented the ambiguous and non-universal rules limiting religious imagery. In his scenes, Aertsen painted close-ups of meat stalls and grocery shops, while the Biblical events took place in small background windows. This way, the composition remained within all possible guidelines, while also adding a double meaning to the subject. The scene of the Holy Family’s flight to Egypt, painted as a background to the abundant and slightly gross butcher’s shop, symbolized the rejection of perishable earthly pleasures in favor of eternal spiritual salvation.
6. Bodegones Were The Spanish Version of the Still-Life
Contrary to the Dutch still-life tradition, didactic and moralistic in its aim, its Spanish counterpart was full of joy in life and its pleasures. Known under the name bodegon—a title that came from the Spanish bodega, meaning “tavern”—these were the joyful and colorful images of food, drinks, celebrations, and genre scenes. Stylistically these were inspired by the Baroque style of Caravaggio, demonstrating the same radical contrast of light and dark tones. Still, their subject matter was lighthearted, contrary to scenes of penitence and torture, so typical for the Spanish Baroque.
7. Modernity Transformed Still-Lifes For Good
The modern era, with its technical and social transformations, brought changes to the concept of art as well. Although the conservative art academies continued to regard still-lifes as a secondary genre, modern artists resorted to it in their experiments. Unlike the Baroque masters, Paul Cezanne generally did not care about the texture or liveliness of the fruit and flowers he painted. His main preoccupation was form that he explored through the compositions of draperies, pears, and peaches.
Still-life became the crucial art form for the radical movement of Cubism. Cubists like Pablo Picasso and Georges Braque continued the work of Cezanne, not only dissecting the existing figures into simple geometric forms but showing them from multiple planes at once. Henri Matisse and his Fauvist art, on the contrary, relied on color rather than form, turning his still-lifes into semi-abstract collections of hues, tones, and patterns.
8. Reimagining Still-Life Today: What Next?
Today, still-life remains a popular art genre beloved by artists, but it hardly ever looks similar to the works of earlier masters. One of the recent transformations of still-life imagery happened in the 1960s with the advent of Pop Art. Masters like Claes Oldenburg and Andy Warhol noticed that recognizable brands and catchy packaging attracted us much more than the products themselves. Advertisements became the main subject of Pop Art still-lifes, reflecting the reality of a capitalist society.
Some artists, like the famous photorealist Audrey Flack, tried to reinvent the Baroque still-life tradition while still relying on present-day technological opportunities. Still-lifes of Flack are hyper-realistic due to her use of photographs instead of sketches. Her edition of vanitas includes contemporary products and objects that are recognizable to the present-day viewer.
