Still-Life with Partridge and Iron Gloves

When Jacopo de' Barbari painted this in 1504, the still life barely existed as a subject. Painters put objects into pictures to serve saints or stories. Almost nobody hung a dead bird on a wall and made that the whole painting — this small limewood panel is among the first in Europe to do so since antiquity. A grey partridge hangs by a nail, with two iron gauntlets and a crossbow bolt beside it, painted so convincingly you feel you could lift them off the board. Down in the corner he left a scrap of paper with the date, his signature, and a small caduceus, the winged staff he used to sign his work.