ABSTRACT
Charles Sterling argued that still-life painting as it appeared in the sixteenth century and flowered in the seventeenth had as its direct ancestors ancient Roman illusionistic frescoes and mosaics. The English term "still-life" is derived from the Dutch stilleven, which came into use in the middle of the seventeenth century. Ambrosius Bosschaert the Elder had a number of pupils, including his three sons, who carried on this type of still-life composition and his style. Willem Claesz. Heda was one of the two leading still-life painters in Haarlem in the advance toward more unified compositions, tending toward the monochrome, that occurred in the 1620s and 1630s, paralleling the similar development in landscapes and scenes of social life. Toward the end of the 1630s the still-lifes of Pieter Claesz, his contemporaries tended to include more elaborate objects in more complex arrangements. Many paintings survive by another great Dutch still-life painter, the strikingly individual stylist Abraham van Beyeren.
