Image: Jacopo de’ Barbari, Still-Life with Partridge and Gauntlets (1504)

For our Saturday art posting, we continue to explore still-life painting.  For this post, we found what is arguably the first still life of the Renaissance, a painting of a partridge and gauntlets shot through with a crossbow arrow by Jacopo de’ Barbari.  It also possibly the first first small scale trompe l’oeil painting since antiquity.

De’ Barbari was from Venice, though his early years are not clear.  In 1500, he moved north to work in Germany, where he is known as Jacob the Foreigner.  Only about a dozen of his paintings survive.  He is also notable for his woodcuts.  His aerial view of Venice being the most heralded.  He died around 1516.

This still life was probably painted to hang on the wall of a hunting lodge, where the magic of the illusion would work.  It is in the holdings of the Alte Pinakothek in Munich. 

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