Still Life with Meat, Fish, Vegetables, and Fruit
Jacob van Hulsdonck (Flemish, 1582–1647)
c. 1615–20
- Medium
- Oil on panel, the reverse prepared with gesso
- Classification
- Painting
- Dimensions
- 71.5 x 104 cm (28 1/8 x 40 15/16 in.)
- Culture
- Flanders
- Museum
- Cleveland Museum of Art, European Painting and Sculpture
- Credit line
- Gift of Janice Hammond and Edward Hemmelgarn
- Rights
- Public domain (CC0), as the museum states it.
- Who can see it
- Little Ones profiles and older: it shows gentle subjects for the very young. How works are placed
View at the Cleveland Museum of Art
About this work
Jacob van Hulsdonck depicted a colorful array of foods, and tablewares ranging from an earthenware trencher to delicate Chinese porcelain—an expensive luxury made possible by international trade. For seventeenth-century viewers, the quantity and variety of foods would have represented a utopian world without scarcity or hunger. Partially eaten food and an overturned glass suggest that diners have just departed, leaving insects to explore the remains.
