Exhibition 'Slow Food: Still Lifes of the Golden Age' in Mauritshuis
The Mauritshuis treats you to richly set tables piled high with tempting morsels and precious objects this spring. Slow Food: Still Lifes of the Golden Age is the first exhibition to be devoted to the development of meal still lifes.
The cornerstone of this exhibition is a masterpiece acquired by the museum in 2012, Still Life with Cheeses, Almonds and Pretzels by Clara Peeters. Alongside this work the exhibition also features masterpieces from the Museo Nacional del Prado in Madrid, Washington’s National Gallery of Art, Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum and others.
From 1600 onwards, richly set tables piled high with tempting morsels and precious objects became a popular artistic theme. The detailed depiction of food, fine silver and glassware laid out on the table was a subject favoured by various painters. The Mauritshuis traces the development of this genre through a selection of some twenty paintings. The earliest meal still lifes came from Antwerp, where they were executed by artists such as Clara Peeters and Osias Beert. At the same time the genre flourished in the Northern Netherlands thanks to the work of Haarlem-based painters like Floris van Dijck and Nicolaes Gilles.
