Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill, Pieter Claesz (1628)
Pieter Claesz’s Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill distills the vanitas tradition to its most haunting essentials. A toppled glass, the guttering flame of an oil lamp, and a weathered skull sit in quiet arrangement on a rough stone ledge, their surfaces rendered with Claesz’s trademark precision. The restrained palette of grays and browns intensifies the scene’s austerity, allowing light and texture to speak with quiet authority.
This is a painting of both presence and absence—objects so real you could reach out and touch them, yet loaded with reminders of life’s fragility and the inevitability of death. By placing them close to the picture plane, Claesz erases the boundary between viewer and subject, making the moral message impossible to ignore. In its economy and focus, Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill is a masterclass in how to make mortality tangible.
Cotton and polyester canvas on Radiata pine wood frame sourced from renewable forests. Includes back mounting.
