Still-Life with Flowers and Fruit

Jan Davidsz. de Heem was born in Utrecht in the Dutch Republic but built his career in Antwerp, and by his own telling one reason was the fruit. In Antwerp, he said, you could find rarer and riper fruit to study from life, plums and peaches and grapes in finer condition. This piece from around 1660 shows what he did with that abundance: flowers and fruit heaped together with Dutch exactness and Flemish richness at once. Look for the small living things he liked to tuck in, a bead of dew, an insect on a leaf, a petal just past its best.