Cheeses, fruit, a waffle, parsnips, strawberries, red currants, butter, cherries, pears, prunes and almonds, a napkin, a bun, mulberries, rolls and a melon on pewter plates, a tazza, a salt-cellar, a berkemeier and a knife on a draped table, with a beerglas on a table, with a parrot perched on a pole beyond, a maid standing by a fire in a kitchen holding a grill iron seen through an open door beyond

As pointed out by S. Segal, A Prosperous Past, 1988, p. 39, the first independent still lifes in Netherlandish painting are to be dated circa 1600. The forerunners of the genre were Pieter Aertsen and Joachim de Beuckelaer, whose influence is here apparent in the maid holding the grill seen through the door in the background. J. Lammers, Fasten und Genuss, die angerichte Tafel als Thema des Stillebens, in Stilleben in Europa, 1980, p. 402, has shown that the so-called 'laid table' still life was developed from militia banquets or from depictions of elegant companies where richly laden tables formed the centre of the composition. The table in the present lot with its neat arrangement of plates as well as its choice of fruits and other spices is particularly close to that depicted in a merry company seated at a table, attributed to Lucas van Valckenborch, recorded at Galerie Welz, Salzburg, 1969, which Lammers, op. cit., p. 39, tentatively has dated to circa 1580 (A. Wied, Lucas und Marten van Valckenborch, 1990, p. 186, no. 95, with ill.) It is tempting to date the present picture just after this work and before Hieronymus Francken's still life of 1604 in the Musées Royaux des Beaux-Arts, Antwerp (S. Segal, op. cit, p. 40, fig. 31) which is generally accepted as one of the earliest examples of the independent still life in Antwerp.

See colour illustration