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The Secret Language of the Most Tempting Paintings in Art
Decoding the symbolism of the Dutch masters
There was a time in the history of Dutch art when paintings reached heights of such vividness and degrees of opulence that the canvases seemed on the verge of bursting.
With an image like Table, made by Jan Davidsz de Heem in about 1670, we see a tabletop laden with food interspersed with expensive objects. Running our eyes from left to right, we’re offered a brass timepiece, a bunch of grapes, an orange, six cherries, a pair of oysters and a half-peeled lemon, scattered among various glass and metal vessels.
An image like this does so much to beguile — by which I mean it is designed to hold the viewer spellbound. Every surface has a veneer, glistening and shimmering, a version of hyper-reality for the 17th century that translates the vision of food, metal, glass, liquid, fabric and light into a disconcerting insistence of plentifulness.
Davidsz de Heem was an artist who particularly enjoyed to furnish a range of textures and tastes across his paintings: hard, soft, smooth, uneven, transparent, opaque: a little short of an encyclopaedia of sensory experiences.
