Still Life with Silver
Medium
Oil on canvas
Dimensions
103 x 73 3/4 in. (261.6 x 187.3 cm)
Classification
Paintings
Department
European Paintings
Museum
Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY
Credit
Purchase, Mary Wetmore Shively Bequest, in memory of her husband, Henry L. Shively, M.D., 1964
Accession Number
64.315
Tags
Art Historical Context
In the lavish tradition of French still life painting, *Still Life with Silver* by Alexandre François Desportes captures the opulence of early 18th-century Europe. Created in the 1720s during Regency period under Philippe II, Duke of Orléans, this monumental oil on canvas (over 8 feet tall) showcases garlands of fruits and flowers draped around gleaming silver vessels. Desportes, a celebrated court painter to Louis XIV and later Louis XV, specialized in hyper-realistic depictions of nature's bounty, blending Baroque grandeur with emerging Rococo elegance. Desportes' mastery shines in his trom...