Still life with plums, figs, bread, keg, jug and other containers, Luis Egidio Meléndez

Link is to a downloadable high-resolution image on Wikimedia Commons; original is in the Museo del Prado.

This is another entrancing and deceptively simple still life by the 18th century Spanish master. I have said that my favorite still life painter in history is Chardin, but Meléndez runs a close second.

Both painters achieve what I feel is one of the highest purposes of art — to prompt us to see the commonplace world around us with fresh eyes — as a cornucopia of visual marvels.

In addition, both Chardin and Meléndez have for me an uncanny Vermeer-like ability to suggest the suspension of time.