Still Life with Artichokes, Flowers and Glass Vessels

Van der Hamen built almost every still life he made on stone blocks of different heights, and this one from 1627 is the device at full stretch. Objects sit on three levels, so nothing overlaps and each thing gets its own light and its own shadow. The museum reads the arrangement as a contrast of the senses, with the tall glass vase of tulips, irises and narcissi set directly above two coarse artichoke heads and their leaves. On the upper ledge there is a blue and white dish of cherries, a small dark glass holding pink roses, and further down a dark glass ewer standing on a glass plate. He signed and dated the canvas at the lower right, in the Madrid of 1627, four years before he died at 35.