Nature morte au jambon

A smoked ham on a pewter plate anchors a table laid for a meal: a white cloth, gleaming metal and glass vessels, bread, nuts and fruit arranged with the illusionistic exactness that made Pieter Claesz the master of the Dutch “breakfast piece”. This “Nature morte au jambon” belongs to the “repas servi” (served meal) type he had made his specialty, every surface rendered with a careful transcription of texture — the sheen of pewter, the crumb of bread, the glisten of the ham — an invitation to the senses that was meant to hang in a dining room. Painted in Haarlem in 1660, near the end of his long career, it shows the monochromatic palette and refined tonal painting that made him one of the most influential still-life painters of the Dutch Golden Age. The painting is held in the Petit Palais, musée des Beaux-Arts de la Ville de Paris.