Still Life with Cheese

The cheeses can be identified. On the pewter plate there are three, and the Rijksmuseum recognises the one at the bottom as an old Gouda and the one on top as a green cheese, the kinds Holland's dairy farms were producing in quantity around 1615. Nothing on this table overlaps much. Van Dijck groups things by kind, fruit with fruit, bread with bread. There is a Chinese dish of olives or nuts, a pewter plate with half an apple, another with green and black grapes, a Chinese bowl of apples, a cabbage, a pear, a knife and roemer glasses, the green wine glasses with knobbly stems. Behind them stands a stoneware jug made at Siegburg in the Rhineland. The museum suggests the cheese was probably meant as a gentle call to moderation. The panel was bought in 1982 with help from the Rembrandt Association, a Dutch society that raises money for museum purchases.