Still Life with Jug and Tulip

Seen today, this picture can look almost modern. The Belvedere compares the three still lifes Punz painted in 1754 to the New Objectivity of the 1920s and 1930s, when painters in Germany turned to sober, sharp-edged pictures of everyday things. Here there are only a few objects on a wooden ledge. A white tulip streaked with red leans out of a small glass bottle of water, two white bowls sit stacked with a spoon in the upper one, and a brown jug with a hinged lid stands beside them. Behind them is almost nothing, a dark wall and a grey upright at the side. Where Punz found the idea for such bare arrangements is not recorded. The knot in the wood of the ledge is painted as carefully as the jug.