Still-Life with Fruit and Insects
by RUYSCH, Rachel, Oil on wood, 44 x 60 cm
This luscious sample of life on Earth represents at least two passions of its time: taxonomy (or categorization) and still-lifes, which emphasize the pleasure of the senses and their ephemerality. Ruysch was court painter to the elector palatine Johann Wilhelm, who gave this painting and its pendant to his father-in-law, Cosimo III de’ Medici.