Still-Life with Fruit, Bread and Two Roemers

This painting is a result of the collaboration between Pieter Claesz. and Roelof Koets. Both painters signed the canvas. Koets painted the fruits and Claesz. the Roemers. The collaboration of two or more artists, specialists in different subject categories, were common in seventeenth-century Flanders. In Holland, such collaborations were less frequent, although it did occur. In Dutch still-life the joining forces of Pieter Claesz. and his fellow-townsman in Haarlem, Roelof Koets is an example that stands out.

The two painters were friends, living in Haarlem. They testified several times together as witnesses in lawsuits. They produced ten collaborative paintings, dating between 1644 and 1653. In these paintings Koets’s hand can easily be distinguished: his sidelong lighting is more dramatic and more playful than that of Pieter Claesz., his foliage comes out stronger against a darker background, his oblong grapes are build up out of thin transparent layers.