Pronk Still Life with Holbein Bowl, Nautilus Cup, Glass Goblet and Fruit Dish

About this work

Artist

Willem Kalf (1619–1693)

Year

1678

Medium

Oil on canvas

Original size

68 × 56 cm

Collection

Statens Museum for Kunst, Copenhagen

Movement

Dutch Golden Age

A nautilus cup mounted in gilt, a tall glass goblet, a porcelain bowl of fruit and at the centre a rock-crystal bowl with gold mounts known as the Holbein bowl stand on a draped table, with a pocket watch, its crystal lid open and a key on a blue cord, between them. Kalf painted it in 1678, late in his career, and it shows the canon of the pronk still life he had established: a few precious objects, a suggestive chiaroscuro, and an obsessive rendering of light on velvet apricots, glazed porcelain and mother-of-pearl. None of these things belonged to ordinary people; the Holbein bowl had been Henry VIII's until 1649, and Kalf may have seen it in the Amsterdam art trade. The watch may be the key to a moral, the earthly life running down. The painting is in the Statens Museum for Kunst in Copenhagen, which acquired it in the early nineteenth century.

This print reproduces the whole work, uncropped, from a high-resolution scan of the original. The original is in the public domain.