Still Life with a Silver Tazza, Willem Claesz Heda, 1630 – (Willem Claesz Heda) ◄ Previous Next ►

Artist: Willem Claesz Heda

Date: 1630

Size: 41 x 56 cm

Technique: Oil On Panel

Going by the almost indecipherable date of 1630, this hitherto unpublished breakfast piece is one of Heda’s early paintings. His earliest still lifes, dated 1628 and 1629, are variants of similar works by Pieter Claesz, as is this one.3 It seems that the two artists embarked on a fruitful period of competition at this time, using the same or similar objects as models. From 1630 on there is no distinction in quality to be made between them in their treatment of this type of breakfast piece, although there are differences in the handling of light and in the technique. Both painted series of fine variants of the theme in a horizontal format (approximately 45 x 60-70 cm) with a fairly monochrome palette. A large rummer of wine is a stock element in their scenes, in combination with a varying selection of other objects, such as a tazza, a watch, a small loaf of bread and a pewter plate with a half-peeled lemon or olives, on tables that are either bare or covered with green or white cloths against a light background. The tazza lying on its side is found in almost all of Heda’s still lifes from 1630 onwards. At least four different tazzas feature in his paintings, with this one being used several times between 1630 and 1633 before being depicted by Pieter Claesz from 1635-36 on.4 A sober variant of this painting by Pieter Claesz is the Still Life with a Rummer and Tazza dated 1636 in Berlin,5 where the foot of the tazza is also reflected in the pewter plate. The watch, however, is missing. A silver tazza, 16 cm high, that is closely related in type and ornamentation and was made in Haarlem, has the date mark 1617 and is preserved in the Roman Catholic church of St Francis Xavier in Enkhuizen.6 It is not known whether Heda loaned or sold the tazza to Claesz or if he acquired it in a lottery, but they clearly used the same model. In the case of Heda, whose still lifes contain many costly silver objects, it is likely that they were made by the Haarlem silversmith Pieter Jansz Bagijn (c. 1600-48),7 who was a relative of his.8 Jan Piet Filedt Kok, 2007 See Bibliography and Rijksmuseum painting catalogues See Key to abbreviations and Acknowledgements This entry was published in J. Bikker (ed.), Dutch Paintings of the Seventeenth Century in the Rijksmuseum Amsterdam, I: Artists Born between 1570 and 1600, coll. cat. Amsterdam 2007, no. 118.