Still-Life with Fruit

Jan Davidsz de Heem arrived in Antwerp in 1636 and brought to still-life painting a more simplified sense of composition and a more intimate atmosphere. But this intimate quality had, ever since the beginning of the century, seeped into the work of severe painters like Osias Beert, Jacob van Es and those young painters, emulators or disciples of Velvet Brueghel whose botanical precision resembles the fine work of a limner.