奶酪、杏仁与椒盐脆饼静物

Clara Peeters was one of the very few women working as a professional painter in the early 1600s, and she built her name on tables like this one. A stack of three cheeses sits like a small tower, a topmost dish of curled butter above them, with pretzels, almonds and dried figs set out in front on cold stone. She rendered the cheeses so solidly they read almost like blocks of rock. Two of her signatures are hidden here. One is engraved on the ornate silver knife. The other is her own face, no bigger than a fingernail, reflected in the pewter lid of the stoneware jug, a trick of self-portraiture she used more boldly than almost any Northern painter before her.