Still Life with Game Fowl, Vegetables, and Fruit

and Fruit
Image result for Still Life with Game Fowl,Vegetables and Fruits
Juan Sanchez Cotan, Still Life with Game Fowl, Vegetables, and Fruit, 1602
By EMMA SHAPIRO

In the 1600s Spanish art began to shift from the idealistic El Greco to a more naturalistic style. El Greco began the effort to emulate nature in his religious paintings, but apprentices and observing artists took naturalism to the next level. Juan Sanchez Cotan painted several still lifes of assortments of game, vegetables, and fruit, contrasted against a black background. He sets the objects in the same space, aiming to separate them as individuals. Although they lie within the same plane, Sanchez Cotan's pattern of naming his paintings puts an emphasis on individual objects. Sanchez Cotan entitled one of his most famous paintings Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cabbage, as it portrays one of each. Still Life with Game Fowl, Vegetables, and Fruit contains items from all three of these categories, but Sanchez Cotan fails to specify. Sanchez Cotan's careful emulation of everyday objects force the viewer to contemplate unreligious items and identify the individuality of each form. Paintings like such characterize his work and call for his recognition as the creator of the prototype for Spanish still-lifes.

A horizontal light brightens the surface of the objects and creates a shadow behind each one. Sanchez Cotan's realistically deep shadowing creates for an intimate yet separated, intense work. Sanchez Cotan's portrayal of simple and slightly unattractive everyday objects beautifies them. His ability to do so emphasizes the superiority of simple things over riches. During the period when Sanchez Cotan worked, society continued to glorify the wealthy and ruling class, and the richness of religion, in most paintings. Sanchez Cotan abandoned the usual subject matter to bring the vitality of conventional objects to life.
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Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber

Drew Bierwirth
Juan Sánchez Cotán, Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber, 1602

First, an admission of my immature analysis of this painting. I decided that this was a murder-suicide scene, with the cucumber as the perpetrator and the melon its helpless victim. Upon viewing the gruesome scene, the quince and the cabbage hanged themselves in grief.

 Moving on.

 Cotán's piece is deceivingly simplistic. His subject matter is basic, just things one would find in a pantry on an average stone slab. This technique of using items that could be found in a bodega, or a pantry or tavern, is referred to as bodegón, an fancy way to describe a still-life painting depicting pantry items. 

 But Cotán then broke away from this technique, his work exemplifying the emerging style of Tenebrism. Also called dramatic illumination, its invention is credited to Caravaggio but it had been used in less definitive ways by Durer. This illumination is produced by using pronounced chiaroscuro, with profound contrasts of dark and light becoming just as important as the subject matter they illuminate. 

 The background is completely absent, as Cotán's subject matter taking up all of the space. Hanging on the side, the quince and the cabbage weigh down the other side of the piece so as to balance the stone wall. Details on the varied produce are deeply shadowed, with what seems like a harsh light shining upon them.The cucumber seems to extend from the piece, its dramatic shadow adding to its depth.

 P.S. A quince is a pome-like fruit from a quince tree. It's closely related to apples and pears and is bright yellow when ripe. Apparently it's really good, and I'm going to get some as soon as possible.
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