Still Life with Bread and Sweetmeats, 1633 – 1636

About the Work

This arrangement by the Frankfurt still-life painter Georg Flegel shows which items the prosperous citizens of the trade fair and trading metropolis on the Main were particularly fond of. Sugar, an expensive imported commodity from Madeira, which reached the Frankfurt Fair via Antwerp or Venice, was in great demand. Fruits refined with rock sugar can be seen here in all sorts of crystalline forms. The butterfly, the wasp and the beetle at bottom right remind the viewer of the transient nature of these delicacies.