Larder Still-Life

Van Schooten’s earliest works typically show a laden table with two figures to the left, and a view through an opening to another room, or as here, to a landscape. The composition of these pictures derives from a pictorial scheme going back to Joachim Beuckelaer in the previous century, and taken up in Antwerp by Frans Snyders in his earliest works.

This picture shows a larder still-life, with farmyard fowl, a turkey, pigeons, a plover, duck, a starling, partridge and snipe, with game and songbirds and rabbits suspended from nails, a rib of beef, grapes and an artichoke, with copper pans, watched by a couple seated at the end of a table, a landscape visible through an embrasure. It is signed with initials and dated on the table-edge lower right: F.V.S. 1621.