Still Life with Fruit and Flowers, Balthasar van der Ast, 1621
oil on panel, h 39.2cm × w 69.8cm Catalogue entry
Flowers, fruit, butterflies, spiders, grasshoppers, a hermit crab in its shell: this painting invites the viewer to marvel at God’s creation. When it was new, the painting must have made a more colourful impression than it does now. The grey tablecloth, for example, was once purplish-pink, but the layer of transparent red glaze that originally covered it has faded.
