Bodegón con aves de caza, hortalizas y frutas

Juan Sánchez Cotán painted this in Toledo in 1602, and within a year he had walked away from it all. In 1603 he shut his successful workshop and entered the Carthusians, an order of near-silent monks, as a lay brother, giving up worldly pictures like this one. That knowledge gives his still lifes their strange charge. Game birds hang from strings, and vegetables and fruit are set out against a black void, each object lit from the side so it stands sharp and lonely against the dark. There is no clutter, no heaped abundance, just a few humble things arranged with the care you might give to something sacred. It was one of the first pure still lifes painted anywhere in Europe.