Fruit Piece, Jan van Huysum

The link is to a zoomable version on Google Art Project; there is a large (14mb) downloadable image on Wikimedia Commons; the original is in the Getty Museum, which also has a zoomable image, as well as a large (18mb) downloadable image.

Even among the highly detailed and superbly rendered still life compositions of his contemporaries, I find the work of 18th century Dutch painter Jan van Huysum extraordinary.

There is a richness of tactile reality and a physical presence in his work that bears witness to his insistence on painting from life, often delaying the progress of a painting until certain flowers were in bloom.

He’s taken the practice of including insects in still life paintings to another level, not only including multiple examples, but studying them with the eye of an entomologist, and his plant forms with with an accuracy that would stun most botanical artists.

It’s not the detail itself that impresses me, however — that’s seldom satisfying on its own — it’s the way Van Huysum has incorporated that level of keen observation and intricate rendering with the artistic goals of a harmonious, dramatic composition. His control of color, texture, and in particular, value, is a joy to behold.

The painting involves you in levels, inviting you further and further into the depths of the artist’s fascination with the visual splendor of nature at a small scale.

The Love of the Hummingbird and The Dead Flower, Manuel Ocaranza

Links are to zoomable versions on Google Art Project, downloadable version of The Love of the Hummingbird and The Dead Flower on Wikimedia Commons, originals are in the Museo Nacional De Arte of Mexico (no images).

The Love of the Hummingbird is a charming genre set piece — as much as still life as it is a portrait/figure study, but together with The Dead Flower, the two paintings may be intended to tell a morality tale — in which the promise of blossoming love suggested in the former is echoed in a metaphor of lost virtue in the latter.

The model is different, but the theme and compositional elements are very similar; the lily, in particular, links the two and can serve as a metaphor for the young woman’s virginity.

Though Ocaranza never officially tied the two works, they were painted during the same period, and displayed together when first revealed; it’s generally assumed they are meant to be related.