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Juan van der Hamen y León (artist) Spanish, 1596 - 1631 Still Life with Sweets and Pottery, 1627 oil on canvas 84.5 x 112.7 cm (33 1/4 x 44 3/8 in.) framed: 106 x 136.2 x 7.6 cm (41 3/4 x 53 5/8 x 3 in.) Samuel H. Kress Collection 1961.9.75 On View |
Canvases like this one earned Van der Hamen his reputation as the greatest Spanish still-life painter of the seventeenth century, when that form was revived as a worthy subject in and of itself rather than as an adjunct to a symbolic or narrative work. Concerned simply with the harmonious arrangement of objects and the accurate representation of texture and light, Van der Hamen established the ringlike stoneware bottle as the center of the composition around which other circles and spheres play. Marzipan boxes foreshortened into ovals, spherical jars of honey and preserved cherries, a circular tray of round, sugared donuts, serpentine cakes, and plump, glazed figs -- delicacies found on the refined tables of the aristocracy in Spain -- contrast with the geometric severity of the setting. The artist arranged the objects on stepped stone ledges, thus varying their distances from the light source. Braided straw, wood, terra cotta, and crystal are masterfully described. These carefully rendered textures reach a pinnacle in the water-filled glass finger bowl that casts a shadow and, at the same time, reflects the light. The calculated distribution of a single color, red in various tones, weaves the forms into a harmonious whole whose simplicity, at first glance, belies its careful structure.