Stilleben med en Rømer

Signed and dated 1652 — exactly ten years after the Dutch painter Philips Angel opened his praise-poem on the art of painting, Lof der schilder-konst (1642), with the old anecdote of Zeuxis’s painted grapes — this panel gathers the banquet pieces that made de Heem the Dutch still life’s most sumptuous name: a roemer of white wine catching the light, fruit, and the pewter and glass of a table just left. The römer itself, with its green glass and prunted foot, was the still-life painters’ favourite proof of skill: transparent where the wine shows, gleaming where the window catches it. The painting is held in the Statens Museum for Kunst (National Gallery of Denmark).