Juan Sanchez Cotan's Still-Lifes

Full disclosure: I'm a still-life junkie. From flower pictures to laid tables, I never tire examining how an artist mixes realism and aesthetics. The history of art is sometimes told through the grandiose, magnificant, and tragic but the history of man can be told through the things with which he surrounds himself. In my mind, still-lifes are the ultimate "art for art's sake" genre because it allows you to mix flowers and foods from different seasons, you can be ahistorical and impractical all for the sake of beauty and composition.

Spanish Baroque painter Juan Sanchez Cotan (1561-1627) painted some of the most compelling food pictures. In 1603, he became a Carthusian monk and most of his paintings date before his entry into monastic life. His best known picture is Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber:

Juan Sanchez Cotan, Quince, Cabbage, Melon and Cucumber, c. 1600, approx. 27" x 33.5".
San Diego Museum of Art.

Cotan's still lifes take place in stage-like setting, most likely a cooling window found in Spanish homes. Foodstuffs were placed in this window so that cool air rushes over the food, keeping it fresh. Scholars debate whether this space is a cantarero or a dispensa. Both serve the same function though the latter is found in the cellar.

I often look for "entries" into a painting; here, our entry into the painting is the cucumber and melon slice. Each of these objects hangs over the ledge and brings us into the space. Cotan's pictures invite contemplation. He draws us in with the black space, the depth of the color preventing our eye from moving into the space and beyond the objects. Once our eyes adjust and recognize the forms, we start noticing how the individual textures of each object. The bright light from outside the canvas highlights every fold, crevice, and bump. And because of this light, each object gradually changes color - notice the cucumber's transition from light spring green to a darker, murkier olive. The sharp, nearly-white peach of the melon's flesh becomes a dark orange in shadow. The black background, the piercing spotlight from outside the canvas- from our space, the meticulous rendering of texture - this is food treated as theater. Visual tension arises from the simple foods and the dramatic presentation.

Cotan's composition is fabulous. The quince and cabbage are suspended in air by strings, a technique for retaining freshness. Cotan hangs them from different lengths, creating a curve spanning from the upper left corner to the lower right. Our eye travels over this parabolic curve in a swoop, and then with the cucumber, we begin the close looking of texture, light, and color. Overall, I love how Cotan's startling design balances form to space to color. It is asymmetrical but still harmonious.

Cotan utilizes the same window-stage setting in most of his paintings. Here is a photograph I took at the Art Institute of Chicago. It is a bit more crowded, but Cotan retains the same compositional structure and light treatment:

Juan Sanchez Cotan, Still-Life with Fowl, c. 1600-1603, 26 11/16" x 34 15/16".
Art Institute of Chicago

Details of the Art Institute painting:

Originally, art historians understood Cotan's still lifes as humble displays of food consumed by lower classes. However, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee professor Kenneth Bendiner points out that in 17th century Spain, all social classes ate cooked foods, not raw ones. Cotan, presenting food in its original state, invites us to look at what is overlooked - food before it becomes a meal.

As our eye studies Quince, Cabbage, Melon, and Cucumber, we may notice how the curve of the melon slice is the same parabolic compositional curve turned almost-but-not-quite perpendicular to the picture plane. Or we might look at three round forms balanced against two elongated ones, which balance the negative space in the upper right quadrant of the canvas. We may even wonder what type of meal can be composed of a quince, cabbage, melon and cucumber. And then we realize we've been entranced by this painting for several moments, musing over foods, meals, technique, presentation, all because of "just" a food painting.

Sources: Kenneth Bendiner, Food in Painting: From the Renaissance to the Present, London: Reakton Books, 2007.