Lines and Colors art blog

Eye Candy for Today: Meléndez still life with plums

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