Still-Life with Ham, Bread and Precious Vessels

During the 1630s Heda painted relatively simple still-life compositions of food and tableware in a restricted “monochrome” palette. His style changed little over the years, throughout his career he always painted still-lifes in a variety of sizes. Around the mid-1650s, he produced a number of fairly large still-lifes. Their basic composition do not differ substantially from earlier examples. he appears to have stepped back, away from his subject, and the resulting effect gives a feeling of spaciousness, especially around the table-top that support the still-life. The present painting from 1654 is the earliest known example.