About still life

In painting and other visual arts, a depiction of inanimate objects, such as flowers, fruit, or tableware. Still-life painting was popular among the ancient Greeks and Romans (who also made still-life mosaics), but thereafter it was sidelined in European art for centuries, as art was overwhelmingly devoted to religious subjects during the Middle Ages. It reappeared during the Renaissance and became established as a distinctive branch of painting in the 17th century, flourishing first in the Netherlands, where the Reformation had discouraged religious imagery and artists were seeking new subjects. Pictures of dead animals are also covered by the term.

Early examples often combine a delight in the appearance of things with religious or moral symbolism. Flowers, for example, can always refer to the frailty and brief span of human life, because flowers quickly fade and die. In the same vein, a vanitas (Latin for ‘emptiness’ or ‘worthlessness’) is a particular type of still life consisting entirely of objects stressing the shortness of life: a skull, a candle, flower petals, and so on. In spite of the popularity of such symbolism, in the history of art still life was regarded as the lowest branch of painting for centuries, requiring only the skill of copying rather than creative imagination. This attitude was common until the 19th century, when people began to be more interested in how a picture was painted than what it represented, and since then many great artists have devoted a good deal of time to still life, which enabled them to concentrate on formal problems. Paul Cézanne for example was particularly suited to still life as he was a very slow worker, and it was also the favourite subject of the cubists.