Still Life with Asparagus

When the Hague collector Arnoldus Andries des Tombe died in 1902, it turned out he had quietly left paintings to two museums. The Mauritshuis received Vermeer's Girl with a Pearl Earring, which he had bought at auction in 1881 for about two guilders. The Rijksmuseum received this bunch of asparagus. Coorte painted it in 1697, and it rewards close looking. The white stalks, tinged with purple and green at the tips, are tied with a single thin band, and the bundle lies across a stone ledge with cracks running through it. One loose stalk has been left apart at the edge. The light falls from one side and leaves everything behind in darkness. Coorte signed and dated the front of the ledge, just below that stray stalk.