The exhibition and its accompanying catalogue explore the abiding themes of still life across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries: the fruit piece, the game piece, kitchen and banquet still lifes, the flower painting, musical instruments, the cabinet of curiosities, and the trompe-l'oeil. The diversity of artistic treatment of these themes in different countries will be shown through related works, such as the fruit still lifes of the female artists Louise Moillon and Fede Galizia or the kitchen scenes by Jean-Siméon Chardin and Luis Meléndez.Other artists who cultivated this genre and who are also represented in the exhibition and in the catalogue include Juan Sanchéz Cotán, Juan van der Hamen, Pieter Claesz, Juan Zurbarán, Rembrandt van Rijn, Antonio de Pereda, Nicolas Largillierre, Jean-Baptiste Oudry, Luis de Meléndez and Francisco de Goya.The exhibition has been made possible due to the commitment of the many lending institutions, private collectors and museums, such as the National Gallery of Art in Washington, The Metropolitam Museum in New York, The Louvre Museum, The Prado Museum, The Rijksmuseum in Amsterdam, The Mauritshuis in The Hague, The National Gallery in London and the Fitzwilliam Museum in Cambridge, among so many others.This volume allows an insight into the theme, through the essays and the individual studies of all paintings, written by such scholars as Peter Cherry, John Loughman and Lesley Stevenson.Contents:Foreword: Emílio Rui Vilar, President of the Catalogue Gulbenkian FoundationJoão Castel-Branco Pereira, Director of the Calouste Gulbenkian MuseumIntroduction: In the presence of things. Two centuries of still-life painting - Peter Cherry; "Delicacies that enrapture the eye and the mind": still-life painting in the Netherlands of the seventeenth century - John Loughman; The golden age of still-life painting in Spain and Italy - Peter Cherry; The still life in France: tradition and equivocation - Lesley Stevenson. Catalogue: List of Paintings Nos.

1-71.Also available:Volume 2 ISBN: 9789728848224.