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Description: | Signed: yes Description: An outdoor still life set at sunset and composed around an oak tree with, from left to right: borage, cotton thistle, rudbeckia, bramble, scabious, cow parsley, trumpet honeysuckle and ivy. Butterflies, including red admiral and peacock species, and moths can be seen feeding on the leaves of the plants. At the top of the composition, a goldfinch is perched on a thistle head. To the right, hanging from the tree is the loop of a bird snare. On the ground in the lower right corner, a frog looks upwards. The background to the right is a landscape with cypress trees. In this painting, traditional 'Vanitas' elements are referenced through images of the natural cycle of life and death, such as in the depiction of caterpillars alongside the adult moths and butterflies that they will become. The frog is preparing to make a meal of the butterfly feeding on the bramble that flutters above and the goldfinch sits beside a snare that will trap and kill it. The early evening setting underscores the overall message of death and decay. The interaction between the creatures included in seventeenth-century Dutch still lifes have been read by some scholars as signifying a covert moral narrative that is played out in a struggle between good and evil in nature. | Subjects: | still life | Source: | Vads | Creator: | Artist: Withoos, Matthias (Dutch painter, 1627-1703, active in Italy) Æ | Identifier: | http://www.vads.ac.uk/large.php?uid=8530... | Go to resource |
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