Trompe l’Oeil Still Life with Flower Garland and Curtain
Adriaen van der Spelt Dutch
Frans van Mieris the Elder Dutch
Not on view
In Pliny the Elder’s story, Parrhasius triumphed over Zeuxis because he strategically painted a curtain on the foreground plane, inventing a classic threshold device—an object that seemingly crosses over into the viewer’s space. In this collaborative still life, where a taffeta curtain on a rod painted by Van Mieris partially obscures a bouquet by Van der Spelt, whose level of simulated reality most astonishes? Seventeenth-century Dutch collectors sometimes placed protective curtains across their paintings, a fact that increases this work’s potential for pictorial duplicity, however fleeting. Other deceits lie hidden in plain sight: flowers that bloom in different seasons and camouflaged insects, such as the Red Admiral butterfly poised at the curtain’s edge.
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