Flowers, Game and a Gun

This one puts a gun on the table. Alongside a spray of flowers lie dead game and the firearm that brought them down, the standard furniture of a hunting still life. Pictures like this hung in the dining rooms and country lodges of families who hunted, meant to show the day's kill and the sport behind it. Game was a noble privilege, controlled by law, so a painted larder of birds beside a fine gun read as a statement of rank as much as a study of feathers and fur. Bimbi, better known for recording the Medici gardens fruit by fruit, works here in the older tradition of the hunt piece, giving equal care to the flowers, the game and the gun.