Still Life with a Roemer, a Silver Tazza and a Bread Roll

Claesz signed this at the left edge, next to the glass: his monogram, the year 1637, and one word nobody has fully explained, TENESIUS. The best reading, from the Claesz specialist Martina Brunner-Bulst, is that it is bungled Latin for Tienen, or Tirlemont, a small town in Brabant which may be where he was born. He worked all his life in Haarlem, in the Dutch Republic, while Tienen lay in the Spanish-ruled south.

The table is a light meal broken off halfway. The tall wine glass is a roemer, green and wide-bottomed, with blobs of glass stuck on the stem to keep a greasy hand from slipping. Beside it stands a silver tazza, a shallow bowl on a foot, and a second cup lies knocked over. On the pewter plates there is a bread roll, olives, and a lemon with its peel cut half away.

A Dutch breakfast table is in Madrid because a collector there, Pedro Fernandez Duran, left his paintings to the Prado in 1931.