Still Life with Monkey, Fruits, and Flowers

A cascade of peaches, grapes and plums tumbles from a silver bowl beside a great sheaf of cut flowers, while a chained monkey perches at the top of the pyramid, one paw reaching for the fruit. Still Life with Monkey, Fruits, and Flowers, painted by Jean-Baptiste Oudry in 1724, is a grand decorative tour de force; Oudry, painter to Louis XV and the most celebrated animalier of his day, animates the classical still life with a rococo wit: the monkey is a little allegory of appetite, mocking the abundance beneath him while the flowers and fruit glow with enamel-like intensity against the dark ground. The canvas is large and sumptuous, the textures — fur, petal, bloom, silver — rendered with a virtuosity that made Oudry the most sought-after still-life painter in France. The painting is held in the Art Institute of Chicago.