La Still life, also known as Still Life is a type of painting that is characterized by the interesting representation of inanimate objects, such as: food, flowers, plants, etc., in a given space. If you want to know a little more about this wonderful pictorial genre, stay and enjoy the content that we have made especially for you!
What is Still Life?
The term still life is attributed to an artistic current that is responsible for portraying the way in which the different elements present in reality are perceived, but with a certain emphasis on the things that refer to our day to day, deepening the interpretation and the dynamics of the senses of the environment from the point of view of the author.
Similarly, the still life, as it is also known, could basically be defined as a pictorial or photographic composition, in which inanimate objects are represented, especially food and household utensils, such as: fruits, vegetables, crockery , food, etc. Usually these objects are placed on top of a table.
Also, but less frequently, they are reflected in the works: musical instruments, dead animals, plants, rocks, books, jewelry, among others. This branch of painting usually uses design, chromaticism and lighting so that an effect of extreme serenity, harmony and well-being is produced.
It is often credited with the title of one of the best-known genres in art history, and one that gives its artists the most creative freedom. Its origins go back to antiquity, long before the 1700s, where topics are slightly different from those of today.
At the beginning, this class of paintings dealt with more religious themes with a symbolism related to the objects represented. Over time, techniques and themes evolved with modernist still lifes that broke all kinds of dimensional barriers and made use of photography and technology.
Some even contained various audiovisual materials. However, after the changes imposed by its practitioners, its essence remains the same. Its popularity has been impressive during different periods, cultures and movements, including the talented Pablo Picasso and Paul Cézanne as some of its exponents.
Still Life Story
To learn more about the origin of Still Life, it is extremely important to point out its history, which could be divided into several stages. These are the following:
Ancient art
There are various traces that serve to assert that the first still lifes found in the history of mankind date back to the mid-fifteenth century BC, in Ancient Egypt. These consisted basically of a way to decorate the interior of their tombs, since it was believed that these paintings would be taken to the afterlife.
In other words, the Egyptians believed that each of the objects that were related to food and domestic life would be able to be taken to the other side, so that the deceased could use them. The most famous still life in Egyptian culture was found in the tomb of the scribe Menna.
In that place, all the walls were perfectly adorned with many details of their daily life. For their part, the ancient Greeks were also in charge of demonstrating their extraordinary skill with paintings about jars and representations of objects and animals common in their society.
In addition to this, other similar still lifes, a little simpler and with a realistic perspective, have been found in murals from Ancient Rome and in mosaics and frescoes from the XNUMXst century in Pompeii, Herculaneum and the Villa Boscoreale, such as “Still life with a glass bowl of fruits and vases”, to place an example.
They were mainly used as a kind of decoration and, in addition, as a way of capturing in the mosaics the way of life they led in terms of their customs and traditions. Similarly, they also functioned as dual signs of inhospitality and celebration of life.
These decorative mosaics were called emblems and tended to be found in the homes of high-society Romans. The upper classes sought to demonstrate to the proletariat and to posterity the variety of foods they enjoyed on their tables day after day.
Little by little, beginning in the XNUMXth century, flowers and food became the clear representation of the seasons of the year and of the five senses of the human being. On the other hand, skulls began to be used in works to symbolize mortality and ephemerality.
It was quite common for the skulls in still lifes to be accompanied by the inscription “Omnia mors aequat”, which in Spanish translates as “Death equals everyone”. This type of art was called "Vanitas", which had a greater role with the arrival of Baroque painting and painters of Dutch origin.
In itself, the popular appreciation of realism in the genre is related to a legend from Greece about Zeuxis and Parrhasius, two artist men who competed throughout their lives to see who was more capable of creating objects that resemble reality, being They are part of the oldest descriptions of the trompe l'oeil technique.
Middle Ages
At the beginning of the XNUMXth century, in the Middle Ages, Still Life managed to resurrect in paintings with religious themes, but as everyday objects that served to accompany the protagonists. They were taken into account as a way of decorating the portrayed scenes.
This kind of pictorial representation was considered minor until the arrival of the Renaissance, because it was usually subordinate to other genres, such as portraits or religious painting itself, which caused it to be frequently associated with religious and allegorical topics.
Such a point could be observed a lot in the works of Northern European artists, whose charm for optimal symbolism and realism was quite detailed, causing the general message of each of their paintings to begin to be lavished with extraordinary attention.
So the still life became an alternative to capture the symbolism in the paintings. In fact, the development of the oil painting technique contributed to these objects having a superior realism. This was because the oil had a slower drying that allowed it to be worked in layers.
At the same time, it gives the artist the possibility of mixing and matching as many colors as they wish. Among the main developers of it could be mentioned the Flemish painter Jan van Eyck, who used to use * different elements of still life as part of what he called his iconographic program.
Another important Flemish painter such as Petrus Christus, in 1449 painted a portrait of a bride and groom visiting a goldsmith entitled "A goldsmith in his workshop", the clearest example of what is known as a transitional still life, since it represents both a religious and secular foundation.
Although their message could be considered primarily allegorical, the figures of the young couple are entirely realistic. In addition, the objects that are observed, that is, the rest of the scene, is described in a fairly detailed way, except that it is actually a representation of the jeweler as Saint Eligius and some symbolic objects.
For the Middle Ages, the representations of still life in traditional paintings went into the background, since they began to be reflected in doors with a purely decorative purpose. Similarly, another step for their autonomy was that they began to paint vases with flowers or with heraldic and symbolic content.
In addition to this, a large number of painters used still life as a method of decorating illustrated manuscripts. Coins, seashells, and bushels of fruit can all be found on the edges of these books. An example would be the elaborate XNUMXth-century text "The Book of Hours of Catherine of Cleves."
Renacimiento
There is no doubt that, with the arrival of the Renaissance, art underwent a radical change compared to what had been done in previous periods. Despite the fact that still life was being considered as an inferior style with respect to allegories or portraiture, at that time it was decided to break all kinds of relationship with the symbolic and the religious.
One of the first to free himself from the religious yoke as far as art is concerned, was the famous Florentine polymath Leonardo da Vinci, who would later be responsible for thoroughly examining nature and capturing it on canvas with the technique that he himself created, the watercolor.
To this is added the German artist Alberto Dürer, whose contribution was also to make detailed drawings and paintings about the flora and fauna. The Italian Jacopo de'Barbari took it upon himself to go one step further with his work “Still Life with Partridge, Gauntlets and Crossbow Arrows”.
The Venetian's painting is known as one of the first trompe l'oeil still lifes signed and dated with religious content reduced to the minimum possible. Hence the belief that in the XNUMXth century there was an explosion in interest in the natural world.
Likewise, there was a significant increase in the creation of luxurious botanical encyclopedias that compiled the documentation of the discoveries of the New World. Likewise, there was a greater impulse in the beginning of scientific illustration and in the classification of species.
Even many centuries later, it is still considered a time of total exploration of nature, which led to it being expressed in the same way in painting. The various studies carried out gradually began to be used as a model for the search for realism in art.
With the arrival of this artistic movement, the artists conceived the natural objects of our environment as individual study elements, separating them from any mythological or religious link. In addition to this, the early science of herbal remedies was taken as a new practical extension of knowledge.
To finance the collections of animal and mineral species, the European nobles and bourgeois began the creation of simple furniture in which they exhibited exotic and interesting objects from all over the world. These were called "Cabinets of Curiosities" or "Wonder Rooms".
As a result of their development, artists used them to get inspiration and seek the realism and innovation they needed. In the residences of these high-society patrons, rare fruits, flowers, plants, shells, and insects were collected and traded for the locals.
An example of this could be the Tulip, a flower widely used in still lifes, which is why it is believed that they are originally from the Netherlands. However, this is not the case, Turkey is the country where they come from and in which they are a true national symbol.
The science of horticulture had an impressive cultural explosion that aroused all the interest of the European continent. This emerging trend, the most intelligent painters managed to capitalize on it by producing hundreds of thousands of still lifes. It should be noted that depending on certain regions or courts there were particular interests.
The powerful and influential Florentine Medici family had a rather characteristic passion for the representation of citrus fruits. Due to the impressive diffusion of natural specimens and the growing interest in their illustration throughout Europe, the creation of modern still lifes took place in the 1600s.
By the second half of the XNUMXth century, the still life had a new evolution and came to be named as autonomous. Gradually, the religious content diminished in the paintings, both in size and location. Only the moral lessons remained implicit in the plays.
To exemplify it we could name "The Well Stocked Kitchen" (1566) by the Flemish painter, Joachim Beuckelaer, since it has a realistic representation of raw meats dominating in the foreground, while the scene in the background is responsible for conveying the dangers of drunkenness and lewdness.
Another would be Annibale Carracci's painting "The Treatment" (1583) which touches on the same theme, but begins to suppress moral messages, as did the various "kitchen and market" still life paintings that were created over the years. of this period.
The iconography of still lifes with many flowers was also popularized by Nordic artists. Traditionally, the pieces are presented with very colorful plants, originating from various nations and continents, all in the same vase and in a single flowering moment.
It was quite common that they did not include other protagonists. Its peak was at the beginning of the XNUMXth century, at the exact moment when Nordic painters became even more interested in the development of multiple realistic studies with objects from everyday life in European societies.
In what is known as the Golden Age, the various Dutch artists of the time took their fascination with detailed floral art to a higher level with "Vanitas" paintings. These are inspired by the Latin phrase "Memento mori", a pictorial genre whose name in Spanish would be translated as "Remember that you will die".
As with memento mori representations, in this type of piece there was a tendency to combine flowers with various objects: human skulls, candles, hourglasses, etc. The latter were almost always rendered upside down, in order to refer to a comment about the fleeting nature of life.
However, unlike memento mori art, vanitas paintings were in charge of including other additional symbols, such as: musical instruments, bottles of wine and books, which serve to explicitly remind us of the vanity of worldly pleasures and goods. .
Seventeenth century
Despite the fact that the still life gained great popularity among the different social groups that made up XNUMXth century Europe, during this period the respect that was paid to paintings that represented historical, religious and mythical events could not be equaled in any way.
At the beginning of this century, renowned academics, such as the Italian Andrea Sacchi, made it very clear that the genre scene and the still life do not provide the seriousness that makes painting something great and transcendental. At the same time, quite successful Italian artists found important patronage for their time.
Despite this, the painters, although they were very few, usually selected or were forced to paint themes with still life, as was the case, for example, with the baroque Fede Galizia, Laura Bernasconi and Giovanna Garzoni. Various other artists from Italy who excelled in different genres also did a few still lifes.
Specifically, Caravaggio was one of the forerunners in representing still lifes with a certain awareness of pictorial work, that is, he worked on still lifes in conjunction with his influential naturalistic style. His best work, a clear example of pure still life, is "Fruit Basket" (1599), as it is presented with its utmost precision and a location at eye level.
This painting was owned by Cardinal Carlos Borromeo until his death, which was appreciated for a long time for both aesthetic and religious reasons. The Flemish painter Jan Brueghel the Elder also painted his picture "Grand Milanese Bouquet" (1606) for the Cardinal, indicating that the painting was done entirely from life.
These two were part of the cardinal's extensive collection of still lifes, along with his collection of curiosities. Within the extensive group of Italian still lifes, Bernardo Strozzi's “The Cook” stands out, a very well executed kitchen scene in the Dutch manner.
On the one hand, the work represents a detailed portrait of a young cook and, on the other, the representation of the game birds that are going to be prepared. Similarly, one of Rembrandt's few still lifes, "Still Life with Peacocks," has combined an enchanting portrait of a young girl in the company of game birds.
The foregoing gives us to understand that outside the Italian territory, in the same way there was an exploration in the genre, mainly in Nordic countries. This occurred both in the Province of North Holland and in the South, where multiple variations of the genre arose.
Among them, the kitchen still life, the breakfast still life and the monochrome still life stand out. The first is painted with hunting objects such as those by Frans Snyders, the second such as those by Clara Peeters, Jacob Foppens van Es and Osias Beert, and the third, which emerged around 1625, such as those by Pieter Claesz and Willem Heda, his two most representative authors.
The still life achieved its independence in the innovative artistic climate of the Netherlands, since it was called "stilleven", whose meaning in Spanish is "calm nature". For its part, in the Romance languages and in Russian, if it was known by the term "still life".
While painters found a limited alternative to creating the religious iconography that had long been forbidden to them due to the restrictions set by the Dutch Reformed Church, the northern custom of detailed realism and its occult symbols began to attract increasing numbers of artists. middle classes across the country.
This little by little was replacing the church and the state, as what was considered the greatest patrons of art in the region. Likewise, during this century a new subgenre called “floral still life” appeared, which clearly refers to this topic.
It arose from the incessant interest in the cultivation of flowers, to later be taken as aesthetic and religious objects, significantly helping the development of this genre of still life. Especially in Holland, the floral still life was sold in open markets or in the same studio of its artists.
However, it was not usual for it to be carried out through commissions, a reason that influenced each painter to create quite personal works, which were governed by their tastes and characteristic styles. They were almost always simple, but beautiful representations of vases and garlands.
This genre had at its disposal an endless number of specialists, among whom stand out: Daniel Seghers, Jacob Caproens and Jan Brueghel the Elder for Flanders, Mario Nuzzi and Margarita Caffi for Italy, and Bartolomé Pérez de la Dehesa, Gabriel de la Corte, Juan de Arellano and Pedro de Camprobín for Spain.
Such was its popularity and importance, that a good part of the Dutch flower painting technique was codified in the 1740 treatise by Gerard de Lairesse, entitled "Groot Schilderboek". It gave a lot of advice about color, arrangement, brushstrokes, harmony, composition, perspective, and so on.
Since the beginning of the Christian era, the symbology of flowers had an important evolution. Among the most common flowers and their meanings we find: rose (love), poppy (power, death), columbine (sadness), sunflower (loyalty, devotion), tulip (nobility), lily (purity, justice), violet (humility, modesty), among others.
Regarding insects, butterflies symbolized transformation and resurrection. For their part, the dragonflies represented the fleeting, while the ants, the value of hard work. In addition, Dutch artists sought to specialize and successfully revived the ancient Greek genre of the trompe l'oeil still life.
Especially, they did it as an imitation of nature or mimesis, naming it as "bedriegertje", in English "little deception". Samuel van Hoogstraten was the first to paint pictures with shelves in which various objects were represented nailed, tied or glued in one way or another to a table.
This type of still life would become very famous in the XNUMXth century in the United States. A different aspect of the trompe l'oeil was responsible for representing objects associated with a specific profession. In “Painter's easel with a piece of fruit” by the Flemish painter Cornelis Norbertus Gysbrechts, each of the tools of the painter's trade is captured.
Likewise, this aspect brought with it the separate identification and development of allegorical collections and vanity painting or vanitas. In the latter, splendid fruit and flower arrangements, books, statuettes, coins, jewelry, jugs, paintings, crockery, musical instruments were used, accompanied by symbolic reminders of how short life is.
Added to this is the use of skulls, hourglasses or pocket watches, a burning candle and an overturned book, in order to reflect the moralizing message of the ephemerality of the pleasures of the senses. It is quite common for some fruits and flowers to be shown in the process of rotting or decaying, so the same consideration is stressed.
Similarly, painting became popular in the middle of this century with a wide assortment of specimens in an allegorical way, from the five senses to the four continents and the four seasons, capturing a goddess or metaphorical figure surrounded by the respective natural objects or made by human.
As a result of this, it quickly spread to other parts of the world: Germany, Spain and France. The still life of the Germans took it upon themselves to more closely follow the models with which the Dutch began. Georg Flegel was one of the pioneer painters for it.
The German created pure still life without any figures, and the innovative compositional placement of detailed objects in cabinets, cupboards, and display boxes. In turn, he produced multiple points of view simultaneously. In the region of Spain, still lifes acquired greater importance until a few years ago.
However, its origins go back to this period, only that throughout history there has been a poor representation of still lifes painted by artists of Spanish origin in royal collections. Consequently, also a little representation in the first years of the inauguration of the Museo Nacional del Prado.
This brought as a consequence, the oblivion so decisive that weighed on this genre in that country and the rest of the continent until the arrival of the 1935th century. Specifically, the revaluation began in XNUMX with an exhibition organized by the Society of Friends of Art, entitled "Vases and still lifes in Spanish painting."
In it, the presentation of the work of the disciple of the famous Blas de Prado, Juan Sánchez Cotán, "Bodegón de hunting, vegetables and fruits" stands out. The recognition continued six years later when he arrived at the Prado through donations, “Bodegón de cacharros” by Francisco de Zurbarán.
The followers of the dictator Francisco Franco found in the still lifes of Sánchez Cotán and Zurbarán a special stimulus for the essentialist vision they had for Spain, fervently delving into the existing differences in relation to Dutch or Flemish still lifes.
In addition, the Francoists insisted on the impact of the mystical nature of still life in their country, linking it to the mystical literature of what is known as the Golden Age, and what they would like the collective and permanent identity of the Spanish citizen to be.
Contradictorily, the topics developed by the nationalist literature with greater conservatism at the glance of a small number of still lifes, were adopted by a large part of foreign scholars, who, despite being very good, did not represent the whole of still life painting. practiced in Spanish territory.
An example of this was Sybille Ebert-Schifferer, who insisted on the simplicity and differences that the Spanish possessed with respect to the Dutch, explaining that even when both had an implicit moral purpose, that austerity close to Spanish desolation rejected fullness, the luxuries and sensual pleasures of the Dutch.
This is not the case of Peter Cherry, because following the German art historian August L. Mayer, he has been able to appreciate quite a lot the rich versatility of the still life that Spain provides. His still lifes had their own particular touch, so characteristic and interesting.
Just as it happened in Italy and France, in Spain the treatise writers in the field of painting, such as Antonio Palomino and Francisco Pacheco, named this type of painting as a simple secondary genre, since they placed the representations of the human figure at the top. highest of artistic representation.
Despite this, the painting inventories that were usually carried out for testamentary purposes revealed that still lifes were very well represented in each of the pictorial collections of all the social groups that made up the nation.
For the seventeenth century, the city of Toledo, far from the splendor it once knew in the past, Paula Revenga analyzed in more than 200 inventories that of 13.000 paintings that were made there, 1.000 were still lifes, that is, 7%. It should be noted that this percentage increased in certain social groups, more so in the lower clergy.
Therefore, it was relatively practiced by some renowned painters in other genres, such as Juan Sánchez Cotán and Blas de Prado, conceived as its precursors in Spain. One could also mention Mateo Cerezo, Francisco de Zurbarán and Antonio de Pereda who cultivated multiple vanitas.
This country gave the world authentic specialists in the field: Antonio Ponce, Diego Velázquez, Francisco Barrera, Francisco de Burgos Mantilla, Ignacio Arias, Juan van der Hamen, Juan de Espinosa, Pedro de Camprobín, Pedro de Medina Valbuena, Tomás Yepes, and so on. A clear example is Juan Fernández el Labrador, whose talent reached the British court.
Generally speaking, in southern Europe there was a preference for Caravaggio's naturalism over the exhaustive detail characteristic of northern Europe. In France, still life painters did find themselves somewhat influenced by the northern and southern schools, borrowing some characteristics from each.
Eighteenth century
With the arrival of the new century, the religious and allegorical connotations were left aside completely. Likewise, kitchen table still lifes evolved to a point where they became representations of various colors and shapes, thus capturing everyday foods.
Unlike in past periods, these types of paintings were commissioned from artists to execute lavish and extravagant still life paintings to grace the tables of the French aristocracy. As well as canvases that did not have the moralistic message that Dutch vanitas used to have.
The Rococo charm of artifice reached its peak in the French appreciation of the trompe l'oeil, known in French as 'trompe l'oeil', “fooling the eye”. Jean Siméon Chardin, considered one of the most important painters of the nation of him in the eighteenth century, used a myriad of techniques ranging from Dutch realism and soft harmonies.
During its revolutionary period, artists in the United States who studied abroad applied the European style to portraiture and still life. They did this by adding other elements, such as flowers and birds, and working on nostalgic painting and hyperrealism shown through everyday objects.
Naturalist Charles Willson Peale set out to found a family of important US painters, along with an association for the training of young artists and a museum of natural curiosities. Raphaelle, his son, was a member of a prominent group of still life artists, accompanied by John F. Francis, John Johnston and Charles Bird King.
XIXth Century
With the appearance of the European academies, especially the French Academy, which had a transcendental role in academic art, the still life began to lose importance and went into the background. The academies of the entire continent were responsible for establishing a hierarchy of genres.
This hierarchy established that the artistic merit of a work lay first and foremost in its theme. That is to say, that based on what is expressed in the system, the highest form of painting was the one that touched on allegorical topics, of history, religion or mythology, displacing still life to a much lower step in artistic recognition. .
Instead of using still life for the representation of nature, a few artists, such as Camille Corot and John Constable, opted for the choice of relating them to landscape images, anticipating movements that would emerge later such as Impressionism.
With the debacle of neoclassicism, around 1830, genre painting and portraiture began to be the favorite genres of the artistic currents of Romanticism and Realism. From them, artists of great renown for the time incorporated the still life into their canvases.
Various still life works by Eugène Delacroix, Gustave Courbet, and Francisco Goya carry an intense emotional current in which they are less concerned with the accuracy of what they are doing and more interested in what their mood is.
Although modeled after the still lifes of Jean Siméon Chardin, Édouard Manet's creations were quite tonal, in a way that was largely aimed at Impressionism. The talented Henri Fantin-Latour, using more traditional techniques, became very famous for his flower paintings, with many customers collecting them.
Already with the final decline of the academic hierarchy throughout Europe, and the heyday of countless Impressionist and Post-Impressionist artists, both technique and color harmony triumphed over subject matter. Therefore, the still life was once again considered to be versioned based on the new pictorial currents.
Claude Monet, in his first still lifes, showed some inspiration in Fantin-Latour, but he was one of the first who dared to break with the tradition of the use of backgrounds and replaced them with vibrant and striking colors, in order to provide greater luminosity. Pierre-Auguste Renoir also innovated with "Still Life with a Bouquet and a Fan" and its brilliant orange background.
In the Impressionist still life, the contents of a religious and mythological nature were totally absent, rather an attempt was made to import a superior chromatic harmony and light treatment. It was quite curious to see the way in which these artists made their impressive creations.
Although they were inspired by the colors that make up nature, they magnificently interpreted their vision, so that on some occasions their paintings seemed marked in an unnatural way. As Paul Gauguin once stated, “colors have their own meanings”.
Other attempts to vary the traditional perspectives can be seen in the work "Fruit displayed on a rack" by Gustave Caillebotte, a painting that was widely mocked at the time. On the other hand, one of those that received a lot of recognition around the world was Vincent van Gogh's "Sunflowers".
Its author made use of various shades of yellow and ocher to make a flat representation that over the years would become a notable contribution to the history of the genre. This was due to the fact that elements of everyday life were captured in an original way.
Van Gogh and his "Still Life with a Drawing Board" (1889) is a clear example of the portrait of everyday life in still lifes, drawn with personal objects, including pipes, food, books, letters, without the image of him is reflected. In addition to this, he also created his variant of the vanitas with "Still Life with a Bible" (1885).
Modern and contemporary art
The XNUMXth and XNUMXst centuries were of great importance for art, since during its first years there was room for a rapid evolution of different art. Each of the pictorial genres, including still life, continued their evolutionary process to leave the figurative far behind and finally achieve what we call total abstraction.
Little by little, elements from Japan begin to be added, working with multicolored backgrounds and, in the same way, exploring more in the abstract concept with geometric figures. This really made a big difference between modern and orthodox still life.
Other painters seeking to reject the movement of cubism decided to use the still life, but in three dimensions, in order to try to return to the conventional. In addition, a few objects characteristic of what we conceive as still life were incorporated into surrealist painting.
As far as Latin American art is concerned, still life was also explored in it. Among its representatives we could mention the Mexican Frida Kahlo and other contemporary artists who took on the task of working on surrealism, integrating foods and symbols of their culture.
Later, specifically in the 60s and 70s, Pop Art appeared, with Andy Warhol and Roy Lichtenstein as its greatest exponents. Although they stood out in their own way, both made their individual versions of a still life with everyday objects, fruit plates, wine bottles and canned soups.
Finally, it should be noted that, with the incursion of photography into modern and contemporary art, the traditional and simple still life could only be displaced. However, this did not necessarily mean its total disappearance, since many artists likewise dedicated themselves to portraying reality in this way.
Still life is continuous and will be forever present today, since the role of light, the sense of full harmony and tacit chromaticism, have become an implicit aspect in the art of painting, regardless of which one it is. the historical moment and its creator.
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