1625 · Staatliche Museen, Berlin

Typically, Italian and French fruit still-lifes in the 17th century tend towards a strictly objective description of the actual phenomena. The Dutch, on the other hand, were still in the tradition of "disguised symbolism" (Erwin Panofsky) as something that gave depth to empirical precision. Balthasar van der Ast's Fruit Basket, for example, contains enough additional elements to show that he is concerned with more than a realistic rendering.Show more