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| © Musée du Louvre/A. Dequier - M. Bard |
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| Michèle Perny, Jacques Foucart - Department of Paintings. |
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Opening days: Monday, Wednesday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday
Duration: 1 hr. 30 mins.
 
Still-life painting in northern Europe depicts familiar, everyday objects, and provides a unique point of contact between painting and daily life. But behind the mirage of abundance, the pleasing array of produce and objects, the paintings invite the viewer to discover a subtler message, exploring questions of appearance and reality, and the nature of symbolism.
From the 16th century onwards, and especially in the 17th century, artists in northern Europe, Flanders and Holland excelled at painting minutely detailed representations of objects from everyday life. The term "still-life" came to apply to compositions of inanimate objects, tables set for meals, or food. Images of domestic life, in the form of kitchen scenes, displays of foodstuffs, and meals became an important genre in their own right, and were highly regarded throughout northern Europe. Over time, still-life compositions assumed ever-greater importance within scenes of this type; gradually, they began to dominate the picture space. The carefully-arranged displays of foodstuffs and objects took a variety of forms, culminating in sumptuous depictions of tables laid with fine tableware, overflowing with food, and sometimes accompanied by figures of people and animals. Such pictures served a dual purpose as documentary records of everyday scenes, and symbolic allusions to philosophical ideas, chief among which was the concept of "vanitas" or vanity. Still-life paintings allowed artists to combine allegorical representations of the brevity of life, and the inevitability of death and decay, with religious symbols, Biblical references, and dazzlingly realistic depictions of familiar objects and contemporary foodstuffs. Today, their veiled pictorial language has become unfamiliar to us. Its multiple layers of meaning have gradually become lost. This thematic trail aims to help rediscover some of the original ideas behind particular works of still-life, and to explore the religious symbols, moral values, and ideals inherent in these heightened, virtuoso depictions of reality.
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From the Pyramid, go to the Richlieu wing and take the large escalator on the right, leading to the second floor. Walk through the first three rooms (French paintings), until you reach the galleries of northern European painting. Start on the left, in room 4: Dutch paintings. Follow the galleries devoted to Dutch 16th-century painting, until you reach room 11.
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