Still Life with Dead Game

Two roosters, a rabbit and three small birds hang from a nail high in a dark niche, their heads coming to rest on a stone ledge hung with a blue purse, a pair of scissors and two scarlet falcon’s hoods tied in white ribbon. Willem van Aelst, the Dutch still-life painter celebrated across Europe, made the work in 1661, in the years after his return from Florence, where he had served Ferdinando II de’ Medici as court painter. A soft, metallic light picks out the sheen of feathers, the fur of the bound rabbit and the plush of the hoods against the near-black wall, while a single fly settles on the cock’s comb — a suspended moment that is at once trophy and memento mori. The carving dimly visible below the ledge gives the picture its air of a private cabinet of curiosities, and the delicate, precise handling made this one of the most admired game pieces of the age. The painting is held in the National Gallery of Art, Washington.