Trompe l’Oeil Still Life with Flower Garland and Curtain
Returned to lender
This work of art was on loan to the museum and has since been returned to its lender.In Pliny the Elder’s story, Parrhasius triumphed over Zeuxis because he strategically painted a curtain on the foreground plane, inventing a classic threshold device—an object that seemingly crosses over into the viewer’s space. In this collaborative still life, where a taffeta curtain on a rod painted by Van Mieris partially obscures a bouquet by Van der Spelt, whose level of simulated reality most astonishes? Seventeenth-century Dutch collectors sometimes placed protective curtains across their paintings, a fact that increases this work’s potential for pictorial duplicity, however fleeting. Other deceits lie hidden in plain sight: flowers that bloom in different seasons and camouflaged insects, such as the Red Admiral butterfly poised at the curtain’s edge.
Artwork Details
- Title: Trompe l’Oeil Still Life with Flower Garland and Curtain
- Artist: Adriaen van der Spelt (Dutch, ca. 1630–1673)
- Artist: Frans van Mieris the Elder (Dutch, Leiden 1635–1681 Leiden)
- Date: 1658
- Medium: Oil on panel
- Dimensions: 18 1/4 x 25 1/8 in. (46.5 x 63.9 cm)
- Classification: Paintings
- Credit Line: The Art Institute of Chicago, Wirt D. Walker Fund (1949.585)
- Rights and Reproduction: The Art Institute of Chicago / Art Resource, NY
- Curatorial Department: Modern and Contemporary Art