Saylor.org ARTH207: "Frans Snyders and the Flemish Still Life"

This lecture is entitled Franz Snyder's and the Flemish still life, or you can think of this lecture as the grandeur of Rubens meets the reality of the everyday. Now Franz Snyder's, who you see a portrait of here on the left, was a preeminent Flemish still life painter. He was a very successful painter in his own right, but he's especially famous because of his association with this man here, and this is a self-portrait of Peter Paul Rubens, who you've already studied a little bit in this course. And in the center here, we have a famous portrait by Rubens, so we can kind of remind ourselves why Rubens was so famous, what the big deal was. But whenever we study Franz Snyder's, it's important to consider his relationship to Rubens, because Rubens was so very famous in Flanders, and anyone who had this association with Rubens would be famous as well. Now this portrait was painted in 1606, and that is the portrait here in the center. And it's a portrait of an Italian noblewoman, and it has, I think, some of the features for which Rubens was so famous, the stylistic details particularly, and I just wanted to point them out to remind you of some of the issues you need to keep in mind with Rubens. First off, we know that Rubens loved these really bold, dynamic compositions, and given that this portrait is just an image of a woman standing in a vague architectural space, there is a lot of dynamism and movement in this portrait. One thing that really does that is this curtain behind the woman, this red curtain, which really swirls and billows behind her, and it also nicely frames her and sets her off against the background. She stands in this very authoritative pose, and he's placed her almost as if she's standing above the viewer, so there's this sense of authority and nobility and grandeur, even in just the way he's placed her on the canvas. Notice the detail he's paid to her dress. This material, you can see that it's kind of a silky, shiny material, so he's paid really careful attention to that, and the light really reflects off of that material, creating more movement and play and interest in this painting. Finally, I just wanted to point out also this vague architectural space in the left corner, which adds, again, sort of a vague grand quality. This architecture is very grand and suggests that this woman is also grand herself. So, why are we looking at a painting by Rubens when we're going to talk about Franz Snyder's? Well, again, Franz Snyder's and Rubens worked together, and Snyder's used some of these same stylistic devices in his own works, but he painted very different kinds of paintings. So, let's take a look at one example of a painting by Franz Snyder. So, this is one of Franz Snyder's most celebrated still lifes, and it's known simply as the Market Stall. Market Stall, and it dates to 1614, and Franz Snyder's still lifes commonly have this kind of arrangement with these vast tabletops that are covered and really almost overflowing with food, and often he includes details like a person or even little cats and dogs, and this is, again, a really excellent example of his typical still life. And I think one of the first things you'll notice about it is it really appeals to the senses. Appeals to senses, and how does he do that? Well, we have these same features we were just talking about with Rubens. There's a real dynamism to the composition. Dynamism, right? The way these objects are assembled, there's kind of a whirling motion moving through the composition. He pays very careful attention to textures. You can see the shiny metal over here, the soft feathers here, and you know, pretty much any object within the painting you could look at it and get a sense for what the texture is. There's real attention to light and dark objects setting off against one another, playful use of shadow, and all of this attention to detail really gives you the sense of what it would be like if you were standing there. And what also helps with that is if you take a look over here at this man in the red shirt, he's lifting his hat up and looking out at the viewer. It's almost as though he's welcoming you to his table saying, you know, come on in, take a look at my wares. So you can imagine yourself there, maybe imagine some of the sounds of the market, what it might smell like, really careful attention to that immediacy that we've come to associate with Baroque art. Immediacy. The composition is really interesting and again, I said it had this dynamism and it's almost an unstable composition and you can particularly see that if you look at this deer here, it's kind of precariously placed on its shoulders. It's as though its rear legs are going to topple forward into our space and everything really does seem to spill over on top of one another. And this is typical of Snyder's. He really assembles his compositions in these multi-layered scenes and the disarray is very pleasing. It's not a bad chaos. It's a chaos that adds interest to the painting and really invites you to kind of come closer and look, pick through some of those, pick through the chaos to find interesting details within the painting. Indeed, there are very interesting details hidden within here if you take the time to look closely. For one thing, over here you see a little boy and it looks like he's picking the pocket of this man who's looking out at the viewer, right? And the man doesn't notice what's happening. So interesting little side story being added in there. Also, if you can draw your eyes away from the array on this table, you'll notice there is a little bit of a cityscape in the top left corner here. So there's something going on beyond this table. You get a real sense of a context for this marketplace. And finally, one of my favorite details, under the table you see two eyes glowing out at you, and that's a little cat. And of course, if you imagine a cat at a table full of meat, that might be a recipe for trouble as the cat might run off with some of the wares of this man. So again, some little interesting almost stories being added into this still life. Now just to remind us, remind ourselves, we were talking about Rubens earlier. You know, how is this like Rubens? Well, we already talked about the dynamism, the attention to texture, interest in color, light and shade, but I think maybe a more important question is how is it dissimilar from Rubens? That answer is simply the subject matter, the setting, the mood. The way it's painted is very much like Rubens, but this painting lacks the pomp and the grandeur and the nobility that we're used to seeing with Rubens in, not only in portraits like the one we just looked at, but also in his mythological scenes, in his religious scenes. This is just an everyday ordinary marketplace, so a very different kind of setting. Another worthwhile comparison, of course, is between Franz Snyder's and other Flemish still life painters, and hopefully you'll remember that this painting on the left is by Clara Peters, and we've already taken a look at this particular still life. Now in stark contrast to Peters, you know, Snyder's has these overflowing, abundant still lives with animals. Peters had more restrained still lifes. We have flowers, nuts, pretzels, on a very small scale. But what both of these still lifes do is they celebrate the objects in the painting, and they use paint to try and bring them to life and make them as real as possible. I want to just pause for a second and ask you to think about what are some important similarities and differences between these two? What do you notice right off the bat? Certainly you can take some time when we're done with this lecture and think about that yourself, but one thing I'd like to point out is whereas Clara Peters has a very narrow view, you can't really see anything else going on, Snyder's has given us a hint of a world beyond his still life, and that's really interesting. So hopefully this lecture will have shown you that not only were Flemish still life paintings for the close scrutiny and admiration of the objects within them as you see on the left, but they could also have a playful quality and invite narrative interpretation, and I think Franz Snyder's shows the range of what still life paintings could do.