STOSKOPFF, Sébastien

Stoskopff painted very simple subjects. His realism, combined with the naivety of his compositions, appeals very strongly to modern tastes.

The painting depicts a still-life with pies on a pewter plate, a roemer, a candle, a pipe and a roll of tobacco, all upon a wooden table. It is typical of the artist’s later works, and was probably painted circa 1640, shortly after he returned from his second stay in Paris to his native Strasbourg.

This signed painting depicts a still-life with a flagon of wine, glass and a loaf and a plate.

The most neglected area of French 17th-century painting is that of still-life. It is still sometimes mistakenly assumed that the work of still-life painters was insignificant in their time compared with the grand designs of Claude and Poussin but, with one major exception, all the main still-life painters worked in Paris; they were not provincial artists working in obscurity away from the mainstream of the development of painting.

The exception was the obscure S�bastian Stoskopff, whose oeuvre has only recently been reconstructed. He was isolated in Strasbourg, the main town of the province of Alsace, which did not come under French rule until 1648 (although Strasbourg itself was not occupied until 1681). In the Middle Ages the artistic traditions of Alsace had their own flavour, being subjected to influences from central Europe, Italy, and, to a lesser extent, France. Stoskopff, however, was influenced by none of these traditions, being a totally isolated painter working in a style verging on the naive. Influences from such German still-life painters as Georg Flegel are discernible, but they merely be caused by the similarity of subject-matter rather than by any stylistic affinity.

Stoskopff art’s is unique. One of the best examples of his work is the Still-Life of Glasses in a Basket. The tonality is monochrome, and the glasses in the basket are positioned in disarray. To this day, waitresses in restaurants in the region collect the empty drinking glasses by placing them heaped up in a basket rather than balancing them on a tray. There is therefore no complex iconography behind such a depiction; it is just a careful record of an everyday sight.

Stosskopf, who was born in Alsace and learned to paint from the Antwerp-born still life artist Daniel Soreau in the Flemish painters’ colony at Hanau, specialized above all in glass still-lifes with delicate light effects. Joachim von Sandrart was to point out in 1675 that Stosskopf had painted ‘many beautiful and outstanding works of still objects, such as tables and silver crockery’. This painting shows a large number of thin, Venetian-style glasses in a wicker basket. Surrounded by other glass, clay and china vessels the basket, which is parallel to the edge of the painting, has been placed on a brilliantly white tablecloth that hangs down over the edge and forms a sharp contrast to the dark background. Stosskopf may well have depicted the costly drinking vessels of an aristocratic patron.

The objects depicted in this still-life are representing the five senses. The musical instruments: Hearing; the flowers: Smell; the table of chess: Touch; the fruit: Taste; the globe: Sight.

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In this still-life with stove, green woodpeckers and tub, in the motif of the tub containing a swimming carp, the painter presents an object seen from the front, above and inside. This is probably a case of perspective being deliberately manipulated and influenced to serve not only its usual purpose but also to steer the viewer’s gaze. It is as if Stoskopff has tried to imitate the meandering course of our eyes across the picture.

This vanitas still-life points emphatically towards the vanity of “art, riches, power and daring”, as pronounced on the slate hanging in the foreground. The items lined up side by side in doctrinal fashion are presented in relation to death. At the same time, Stoskopff’s painting seems to question the declaration on the slate by lending permanence and status to what is fleeting. It is precisely the reference to their transience that heightens our aesthetic pleasure in these illusory examples of worldly values, no more real than the theatrical props in a harleqinade - as referenced by the commedia dell’arte character of Zani, who winks at us from out of the picture.

This masterpiece of the Vanitas genre is signed on the table and dated on the flask containing a juice or a liquor made of lemon labelled in Latin ‘Succucz limonum’.