The meal in peril. Still life with black servant and parrot

Jan Davidsz de Heem moved from Utrecht to Antwerp in the mid-1630s, and his early biographer Arnold Houbraken gave a practical reason for it: in Antwerp he could get rare fruit in good enough condition to paint from life. By 1641 Antwerp's harbour had been shut to seagoing trade for decades, blockaded by the Dutch downriver, and the city's painters were still supplying Europe with images of plenty. This is the largest of his banquet pieces, over two and a half metres wide. Lobster, pomegranates, figs, silver, a globe, two parrots. The peril of the title is the monkey climbing towards the table, with a boy behind the column trying to head it off. That figure was painted by another hand, the Antwerp specialist Thomas Willeboirts Bosschaert. A clock and a mirror sit among the silver, the usual reminder in this kind of picture that the meal will not last.