IDENTIFIERS ----------- id: 1078 accession number: 295 DATE AUDIT ---------- created: Saturday 6 August 2011 updated: Tuesday 24 September 2024 DESCRIPTIVE DATA ---------------- object type: Oil painting on a copper plate, depicting fruit and macaws. The various fruits includes grapes, cherries, pears, apricots and pomegranate. In the foreground are a pair of macaws, one red and yellow, the other yellow and dark green-black, as well as a pair of Ming blue and white porcelain dishes. object type: Label text from the exhibition Feast and Fast: The Art of Food in Europe, 15001800, on display at The Fitzwilliam Museum from 26 November 2019 until 31 August 2020: Still life with fruit and macaws Painted on copper for maximum luminosity, this brightly coloured image was designed to delight the senses. On the one hand, it celebrates abundance, luxury, and the exotic with succulent fruit, two New World macaws, and two Chinese blue-and-white porcelain dishes made for export to Europe. However, closer inspection reveals insects on the fruit, leaves curling and turning brown, and a pomegranate past its best. Such details were included as a coded moralising message to show the destructive effects of time, calling to mind the brevity of life and warning against worldly vanity: the fruit will rot, the birds will die, and the porcelain will break. Balthasar van der Ast (1593/94 1657) Utrecht, Netherlands, 1622 Oil on copper Daniel Mesman Bequest, 1834 (295) 66 Dish with pomegranate tree This unusually large mid-seventeenth-century Chinese blue-and-white dish is embellished with a stylised pomegranate tree-of-life. A pair of split-open pomegranates nestle at the centre of its trunk, their seeds deliberately exposed as a sign of their reproductive capacity. Like the porcelain dishes in van der Asts painting (displayed to the left), this expensive dish was made for a wealthy European, the luxury and exoticism of the pomegranate motif echoing that of the porcelain. title: painting LICENSING --------- text license status: CC0 image license status: CC-BY-NC-SA OWNERSHIP --------- instutition: The Fitzwilliam Museum department: Paintings, Drawings and Prints creditline: Bequeathed by Daniel Mesman STABLE URL ---------- url: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/id/object/1078 SUBJECTS ------------------- bowl parrots pears grapes bowl parrots pears grapes TECHNIQUES ---------- oil on copper painting (image-making) CATEGORIES ------ category: painting DATING ------ creation date: 1622 - 1622 creation date earliest: 1622 creation date latest: 1622 culture: 17th Century CREATORS -------- maker: Ast, Balthasar van der DIMENSIONS ---------- dimension: Height units: cm value: 20.5 dimension: Width units: cm value: 26.8 EXHIBITIONS HISTORY ------------------- title: Feast and Fast: The Art of Food in Europe (1500-1800) title: 17th Century Dutch Art title: Pick of the Bunch title: Treasured Possessions from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment CITATIONS -------- A Descriptive Catalogue of the Pictures in the Fitzwilliam Museum Dutch and Flemish Flower and Fruit Painters Catalogue of Paintings in the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, Vol. I, Dutch and Flemish Pick of the Bunch; a loan exhibition of flower and still life paintings from the Fitzwilliam Museum, Cambridge, including works from the Broughton bequest Treasured Possessions from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment --- IMAGES surrogate: large format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa30/295_1_20140218_mfj22_mas.jpg height: 787 pixels width: 1024 pixels surrogate: mid format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa30/mid_295_1_20140218_mfj22_mas.jpg height: 384 pixels width: 500 pixels surrogate: original format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa30/295_1_20140218_mfj22_mas.jpg height: 787 pixels width: 1024 pixels surrogate: preview format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/aa/aa30/preview_295_1_20140218_mfj22_mas.jpg height: 192 pixels width: 250 pixels surrogate: large format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/570/768/large_295_201402_mfj22_mas.jpg height: 823 pixels width: 1024 pixels surrogate: mid format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/570/768/mid_295_201402_mfj22_mas.jpg height: 402 pixels width: 500 pixels surrogate: original location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/295_201402_mfj22_mas.tif surrogate: preview format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/570/768/preview_295_201402_mfj22_mas.jpg height: 201 pixels width: 250 pixels surrogate: zoom format: pyramid tiff location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/570/768/295_201402_mfj22_mas.ptif height: 4843 pixels width: 6027 pixels surrogate: large format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/629/843/large_295_201402_mfj22_dc1.jpg height: 786 pixels width: 1024 pixels surrogate: mid format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/629/843/mid_295_201402_mfj22_dc1.jpg height: 384 pixels width: 500 pixels surrogate: original format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/629/843/295_201402_mfj22_dc1.jpg height: 3830 pixels width: 4989 pixels surrogate: preview format: jpeg location: https://data.fitzmuseum.cam.ac.uk/imagestore/portfolio/F25982D9_7CB9_CFFF_028E_8BBFC531887C/629/843/preview_295_201402_mfj22_dc1.jpg height: 192 pixels width: 250 pixels