Still life

A still life shows things that do not move: fruit, flowers, vessels, books and dead animals. Behind the calm surface there often lie big questions about wealth, transience, trade and the very act of seeing.

• Ancient grapes and an unswept floor
• Caravaggio’s Basket of Fruit and the first independent still lifes
• Spanish bodegones: quinces, cabbages and lemons
• Dutch breakfast tables and splendid goblets
• Vanitas: skulls and soap bubbles
• Chardin, Manet and the quiet of everyday life
• Cézanne’s apples, Cubist collage and Warhol’s soup
• China and Japan: persimmons, scholars’ objects and a salmon
• Still life in the Nordic countries