Still Life with Fruit and Flowers on a Draped Ledge

Michiel Simons, an artist who died in Utrecht in 1673, but about whom otherwise little is known, seems to have been exclusively a painter of still lifes. This example of his work features the classic “ingredients” of Dutch seventeenth-century still life: sumptuous fruits, flowers, and foliage; a half-peeled lemon; a lobster; a patterned porcelain bowl (probably Chinese blue-and-white or Delft ware) and a beaker half-filled with quenching drink. Such paintings have been interpreted to signify the ostentatious abundance of worldly goods in the golden-age Netherlands (the “embarrassment of riches” about which Simon Schama has written), or alternatively the transience of earthly pleasures (the “memento mori” message, sometimes carried explicitly by a death’s-head amid items of luxury). The fruits and flowers represented here quite likely had specific symbolic meanings or associations that have grown more obscure over time. The suggestion of a curtain drawn aside behind the generously spread table adds a theatrical element which may reflect Italianate influences on Simons’s work.