Banquet Still Life

The viewpoint here is low, as if you were standing below the table and looking up at it. That is why the Rijksmuseum thinks this canvas, almost two and a half metres wide, was painted to hang above a chimneypiece. Adriaen van Utrecht signed and dated it 1644 on the sheet of music at the bottom, beside a violin and a lute. The table carries a cut-open pie, gilded silver cups, a seashell mounted as a jug, and a huge red lobster on a blue-and-white Chinese dish, the kind of porcelain European ships were then bringing home from China. One scholar has read the animals as the five senses. The parrot stands for sight and touch, the monkey picking cherries for taste, the little white dog for smell, and the instruments for hearing.