The support is a single horizontally grained oak panel bevelled on all sides. The thin smooth ground has an off-white colour. The paint was applied with smoothly blended brushstrokes, with delicate and sharply defined impasto for the highlights. The composition was painted from the back to the front.

Fair. The paint layer on top of the wood grain in the background is degraded and abraded. The thick varnish is discoloured.

…; purchased by a private collector from P. de Boer, Amsterdam, c. 1935;¹¹Oral communication, P. de Boer, 2005.…; on loan to the museum since April 2005; on loan to the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, since April 2005

Object number: SK-C-1694

Credit line: On loan from a private collector

Going by the almost indecipherable date of 1630, this hitherto unpublished breakfast piece is one of Heda’s early paintings. His earliest still lifes, dated 1628 and 1629, are variants of similar works by Pieter Claesz, as is this one.³³Heda’s Vanitas still life of 1628 in Museum Bredius, The Hague (coll. cat. The Hague 1990, pp. 103-04, 130, no. 67) recalls Claesz’s Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill of 1628 in the Metropolitan Museum in New York, and his Still Life with a Rummer, Fish and Watch of 1629 in the Mauritshuis, The Hague, is reminiscent of a similar still life by Claesz, also of 1628. See Brunner-Bulst 2004a, pp. 169-72, compare figs. 50 and 51 by Heda, with nos. 37 and 40 by Claesz. It seems that the two artists embarked on a fruitful period of competition at this time, using the same or similar objects as models. From 1630 on there is no distinction in quality to be made between them in their treatment of this type of breakfast piece, although there are differences in the handling of light and in the technique. Both painted series of fine variants of the theme in a horizontal format (approximately 45 x 60-70 cm) with a fairly monochrome palette. A large rummer of wine is a stock element in their scenes, in combination with a varying selection of other objects, such as a tazza, a watch, a small loaf of bread and a pewter plate with a half-peeled lemon or olives, on tables that are either bare or covered with green or white cloths against a light background.

The tazza lying on its side is found in almost all of Heda’s still lifes from 1630 onwards. At least four different tazzas feature in his paintings, with this one being used several times between 1630 and 1633 before being depicted by Pieter Claesz from 1635-36 on.⁴⁴This was remarked upon by Meijer in coll. cat. Oxford 2003, pp. 191-92, notes 6-7. Claesz painted the same tazza in the paintings reproduced in Brunner-Bulst 2004a, pp. 57, 59, 61, 243, 246-48, while in addition to the Rijksmuseum painting it served as a model for Heda in a still life of 1630 (illustrated in Vroom 1980, I, p. 66, no. 328) and in a still life dated 1633 in the Frans Hals Museum (illustrated in Vroom 1980, I, p. 70, fig. 85). A sober variant of this painting by Pieter Claesz is the Still Life with a Rummer and Tazza dated 1636 in Berlin,⁵⁵Brunner-Bulst 2004a, pp. 57, 242, no. 68. where the foot of the tazza is also reflected in the pewter plate. The watch, however, is missing.

A silver tazza, 16 cm high, that is closely related in type and ornamentation and was made in Haarlem, has the date mark 1617 and is preserved in the Roman Catholic church of St Francis Xavier in Enkhuizen.⁶⁶Frederiks I, 1952, pp. 24-25, no. 14. It is not known whether Heda loaned or sold the tazza to Claesz or if he acquired it in a lottery, but they clearly used the same model. In the case of Heda, whose still lifes contain many costly silver objects, it is likely that they were made by the Haarlem silversmith Pieter Jansz Bagijn (c. 1600-48),⁷⁷Citroen 1988, pp. 35, 89. who was a relative of his.⁸⁸With many thanks to Pieter Biesboer of the Frans Hals Museum, Haarlem, for these suggestions.

Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007

See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues
See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements

This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 118.

2007, no. 118

J.P. Filedt Kok, 2007, 'Willem Claesz. Heda, Still Life with a Silver Tazza, 1630', in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum, online coll. cat. Amsterdam: https://data.rijksmuseum.nl/200471064