Lot 1110 Dα

Jan Mortel was born in Leiden in 1652 and specialised in still lifes influenced by Abraham Mignon and Jan Davidsz. de Heem. The opulent arrangements of flowers and fruit pay tribute to the fine tastes in Dutch painting around the transition from the 17th to the 18th century. This work, dated 1715, is a fine example of this artist's masterful treatment of still life motifs developed throughout the 1700s. We see different fruits piled high upon a stone slab, including peaches, apples, grapes, cherries, blackberries, and a pomegranate, allowing Mortel to display his ability to depict differing surface textures and structures. In some places, he has created deliberate contrasts, such as that between the dark flesh of a blackberry placed against the bright yellow and red of an apple. The snail crawling up the stone and the beetle perching upon one of the peaches are traditional still life motifs, which serve to increase the depiction's sense of realism, as is the ear of wheat hanging over the slab. The stone is decorated with a relief showing Vertumnus and Pomona, the ancient Roman personifications of fertility. This too illustrates the fine tastes of the educated patrons for whom Jan Mortel created still lifes.
The present work is strongly assumed to be the piece that Cornelis Hofstede de Groot saw and described in the Harrach Collection in 1889.