(Leiden 1631–1695 Antwerp)
Flowers and fruit on a stone plinth,
signed centre right: C. DE. HEEM f.,
oil on canvas, 76 x 65.5 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Switzerland;
sale, Koller, Zurich, 21 September 2005, lot 3028;
Private collection, Belgium

The present painting is listed in the RKD database under no. 116264.

The present arrangement of roses, lilies and carnations heaped upon a stone ledge set with figs, melons and peaches is a characteristically refined ‘Pronkstilleven,’ as such ostentatious show pieces were called, from the hand of Cornelis de Heem. Pronkstilleven were a distinct sub-genre developed in Antwerp, illustrating a sense of cosmopolitan luxury. Trained in the Antwerp workshop of his father Jan Davidsz. de Heem, Cornelis became a master of the Guild of St. Luke there in 1660. The popularity among Dutch collectors of Cornelis’ refined Flemish Baroque oeuvre later led to his becoming active in the booming art markets of the Dutch Republic from 1667 onwards, where he was active in Utrecht, the Hague and Ijsselstein. The present work is executed on a more intimate scale, and with bolder colouring than Jan Davidsz.’s oeuvre, suggesting, as Fred Meijer has pointed out, that Cornelis may have painted this work around the 1670s when he was more confidently defining his own style vis-a-vis that of his renowned father. A related work, Still Life of Flowers and Fruit arranged on a Stone Plinth in a Garden, hanging in Dyrham House, Gloucestershire, was likely painted in the mid-1680s when the artist was living in The Hague.

The presence of expensive fruits imported from southern climates, are a testament to the abundance of natural luxury deliberately heaped upon itself here and so flamboyantly rendered by the brilliant palette employed by Cornelis. There was within such works, (the de Heems were Catholic, but Lutherans and Calvinists used the same moral devices) an ever-present sense of vanitas, that all such extravagance and beauty was passing. In the background the domed ceiling, partially collapsed, with moonlight spilling through it to illuminate the composition, may allude further to a sense of transient splendour, as if the whole work is set in an antique ruin, imbuing it with the vainglory of vanquished empire. A connoisseur of this time would have known that much of Rome’s ancient wealth was still unexcavated beneath centuries of built up silt from the Tiber, with artistically influential structures such as the Domus Aurea, literally accessed through what appeared to be holes in the ground, but which were in fact cavities in the domed ceilings of ancient palaces. Finally the mushrooms and assorted fungi below add to the subtle sense of impending decay.

The de Heem family and their scintillating output bear witness to the interwoven and at times traumatic history of both Habsburg-ruled Flanders and the Dutch Republic. Jan Davidsz. was born in Utrecht and trained in the studio of Balthasar van der Ast there, where he was known as Johannes van Antwerpen on account of his Flemish origins before returning to Flanders, apparently soon after the birth of Cornelis in 1631, and joining the Antwerp Guild of St. Luke in 1636. The Peace of Münster in 1648, facilitated artistic travel again between the North and South Low Countries. However, through a childhood and adolescence marked by the ever present spectre of armed conflict, Cornelis would have trained in the de Heem Antwerp workshop alongside other highly accomplished pupils such as Abraham Mignon, Elias van den Broek and Jacob Marrel. Although bearing many of the same refinements and iconographic subtleties, Cornelis’s works are distinguishable from the works of both his father and his contemporaries by his meticulously multi-layered glazing technique which renders the flowers and leaves in his works both exquisitely soft and with a sense of unearthly transparency as may be seen in the present canvas.