Juan Sánchez Cotán (1560–1627). Still Life with Fruit and Vegetables, ca. 1602. Oil on canvas, 69.5 x 96.5 cm. Várez Fisa Collection, Madrid

Although still life painting was practiced in other European countries, only in Spain did it transcend its traditional status and rise to the same heights as other genres. Bodegón is the Spanish term for still life (from bodega, a storeroom or tavern). Taken more generally, bodegón refers to the representation of common objects of daily life, frequently including food. The still life image may contain piles of fruit, silvery fish lying on a plate, game birds hanging on a wall, or arrangements of flowers. Still lifes may also contain shiny pewter vessels, transparent glasses, woven rugs, books, jars, pipes, a writer’s inkwell, or the painter’s brush and palette. There are works that display the ingredients for an upcoming meal. All manner of inanimate objects are suitable subjects for still lifes, for the painter’s skill suddenly makes us aware of the artistic properties of ordinary things.

Still lifes can also carry a moral message, striking a serious, almost tragic note. The presence of a skull amid the beautifully painted objects is a reference to the transience of all things. These paintings, known as vanitas, are reminders of the vain emptiness of worldly things.

The emergence throughout Europe of the modern still life toward the end of the sixteenth century was a phenomenon related to rapidly evolving conditions in a society on the threshold of the modern age in politics, science, philosophy, and art. From that time on, no longer conceived as merely decorative or symbolic, the depiction of such things became the focus of a new relationship between the painter’s eye, his brush, and his mind. This approach seems to foreshadow the Cubist painters of the twentieth century, who used the potential of the still life to explore the very boundaries of art. Their concern with purely formal values was the ultimate extension of an attitude that, more than three hundred years before them, led another generation of radical young artists to paint the first such pictures without narrative content—works in which the perception of nature, the endurance of art, and the power of the artist were the principal subjects.

About the works

Within the context of art that was being produced around 1600, the still lifes of Juan Sánchez Cotán must have seemed amazing. Their intense naturalism had few parallels. It was among educated people at the highest levels of society in Toledo, a major independent center of artistic activity some thirty miles south of Madrid, that such pictures found their first audience in Spain. These wealthy, intellectual patrons appreciated the combination of artistic virtuosity and religious symbolism invested in seemingly mundane objects. The painters and collectors of Toledo viewed these works as a sophisticated new genre in which the most ordinary elements of the natural world were transformed into high art.

All of the known still lifes by Sánchez Cotán display their objects within a window setting. This shallow, precisely defined space allowed the artist to achieve, through the strong modeling of forms in light, a truly compelling sense of space. He connected this space to the viewer by arranging certain objects so that they protrude over the front edge of the windowsill, also suspending others from invisible hooks above. The hanging vegetables may look strange, but in Spain at the time this was a normal way of protecting produce from pests. At the right, a bunch of parsnips and carrots hangs slightly in front of the window, while on the sill below, a pink and white cardoon lies on its side. The dark background against which the fruits and vegetables are silhouetted provides a sense of great depth. A powerful light greatly enhances the surfaces and textures, yet somehow fails to illuminate the background space, which remains submerged in deep shadow. The window becomes a sort of stage on which the high drama of art imitating nature is played out.

The still lifes of Sánchez Cotán are still well-known today, yet their most important legacy was elevating the status of still life painting so that even the most famous Spanish painters of the seventeenth century recognized that still life subjects presented a formidable challenge to even the most accomplished of painters.

Juan Gris was one of the world’s foremost Cubist artists, and his career as a painter, from 1910 to 1927, correlates exactly with the years of Cubism’s greatest notoriety. Born in Madrid, Gris studied engineering and amused himself by drawing caricatures in his notebooks. In 1906, after some years of contributing humorous sketches to two Madrid papers, he went to Paris, where he lived among the artists and writers who were to make artistic and literary history. He worked as a graphic artist until 1910, when he began to paint in watercolors. By 1911, Gris had begun to paint in oils, in the Analytical Cubist manner of his artist friends Georges Braque and Pablo Picasso. Although Gris did not invent Cubism, he was one of its most capable exponents and gradually evolved his own personal style, combining the representation of objects from different angles with his own unique sense of color. He was frequently criticized for practicing a “cold” and “cerebral” style, but in many ways Gris continued the Spanish tradition by painting intensely crafted twentieth-century bodegones that relied on a methodical geometry. His champion, Gertrude Stein, said that for Gris “still-life is a religion.” In The Book, the distortions are still restrained and each object can be clearly discerned. The jar, the coffee pot, the cup, and the book could lead their own independent lives if they were not so much better off in their successful interrelationship. The tension in the picture derives from the placement and coloration of the objects. Gris would soon abandon this more conventional approach to modeling as he continued to experiment with more radical distortions of form.

• Sánchez Cotán created this canvas more than four hundred years ago. Which of the fruits and vegetables do you recognize? Which are unfamiliar? The cardoon (related to celery, the artichoke, and the thistle) appears in many of Sánchez Cotán’s paintings. What might the artist have found fascinating about this lowly vegetable?
• In his lifetime, Sánchez Cotán’s paintings were admired for their naturalism and accurate depictions of ordinary things. Today, technology allows us to record images with exact clarity at the click of a button. Has new technology diminished your interest in paintings that aim toward realistic depictions, or does this image still seem remarkable? Explain.
• Although there are several objects depicted in this painting, Gris chose to title his work The Book. Do you think this is an appropriate title? Why or why not? What other titles does this painting suggest to you?
• Look carefully at these works and describe them in detail. Both Sánchez Cotán and Gris became well-known for their still life works and chose to use everyday, humble objects as their subject. What objects would you include if you were to paint a still life? What about these objects appeals to you?
• These two works were created roughly three centuries apart. They are both classified as still lifes, but they are painted in very different styles. Looking at them side by side, describe as many of the differences between them as you can. What similarities can you see, if any?
• These paintings make statements not only about the objects depicted in them, but also about the artists who painted them. What might have been the artists’ goals in creating these works?

• Using a shallow cardboard box with the inside painted black, set up a still life of fruits and vegetables that emulates Sánchez Cotán’s arrangement as closely as possible. Once the composition is complete, try to duplicate the lighting in the painting. Discuss the differences between your constructed still life and the painting. How is the lighting in Sánchez Cotán’s painting different from the lighting you were able to achieve in your still life? Photograph your composition with a digital camera and, using Photoshop, manipulate the image to create the most dramatic interpretation. What adjustments helped you to create dramatic effects?
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• The word composition refers to the way an artist arranges shapes across a page or canvas. Whereas Sánchez Cotán distributed the fruits and vegetables nearly evenly across his canvas, Gris created tension through the asymmetrical placement of his objects. Describe the effect of each. Then choose between five and ten objects to compose your own tabletop still life. First arrange and draw your objects in a balanced composition, spreading them out nearly evenly. Then rearrange the same objects into an asymmetrical design and draw them. Compare the two drawings. Describe how changing the composition changed the effect of your drawing.
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• Print out copies of both paintings and paste each on to a much larger piece of paper. You need not paste the image in the center of your paper. Using the stylistic cues from the image and your imagination, envision the wider space that these objects might inhabit and extend the picture accordingly. Where are we and what does the rest of the surrounding environment look like? Does your work include people, furniture, a source of light? Share your work with your classmates. How is the space you created similar to or different from theirs?
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• Sometimes bodegones picture the ingredients that might be used to cook a meal. In this exhibition, Luis Meléndez’s Still Life: Fish, Scallions, Bread and Kitchen Containers (ca. 1760–70) is an example of a painting that pictures the makings of a typical Spanish meal. Ask students to assemble and arrange the various ingredients of a favorite recipe into a personal bodegón and draw it. Students should display the resulting drawing and discuss their artistic as well as culinary choices. The student recipes and drawings can be combined into a class cookbook.
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  English / Language Arts