Dynamist Blog

Picturing Abundance

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My friend Cosmo Wenman writes:

I like your example of abundance--a photo of dinner.

I've always liked renaissance still lifes of tables of food. Food was a natural subject for an artist--familiar, colorful, poseable (and still!), but I think those paintings conveyed a strong sense of the human-scale importance of a meal. The extravagance of commissioning an expensive, giant painting of a table overflowing with food must have been a really strong statement.

Cosmo makes a good point, one that I'll keep in mind next time I'm bored looking at slightly disgusting Dutch paintings of food. (As I mentioned earlier, I prefer architectural paintings, like this or these.)

Here are some more examples.

"I especially like the ones with exotic seafood or with a pet that gets to share in the bounty," he concludes. Like these:

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