(Antwerp 1611–1661)
Black and White Grapes and Quinces on a silver salver on a velvet cushion,
signed upper left: Joannes Fyt,
oil on canvas, 84 x 122 cm, framed

Provenance:
Private collection, Belgium, since the 1950s

Jan Fyt, along with his tutor Frans Snyders, ranks among the foremost still-life painters and so-called ‘animaliers’ of the Flemish Baroque, and the present careful arrangement of fruit on a silver salver shows the master at the peak of his powers. The heaped grapes, their sheeny skins reflecting the carefully modulated light, would have been understood in Counter- Reformation Antwerp society as symbolizing the Resurrection through the Transubstantiation of wine into the Blood of Christ, while the quinces evoke ephemerality, or the shortness of human life.

Already a master of the Guild of St. Luke in Antwerp when he was recorded there in 1629 assisting Snyders, both Fyt and Snyders were employed by Peter Paul Rubens to execute flowers, fruits and animals in his most prestigious commissions. Fyt sojourned in Paris 1633-34, before visiting Florence, Venice and Rome, where he was a member of the Bentvueghels, who engaged in Bacchic rituals where grapes also held rich symbolism.

Although the painterly bravura of the present work is characteristic of Fyt’s own hand, he ran a successful workshop, executing around 160 recorded works. His most accomplished pupils included Peeter Boel and Jacques van den Kerckhove.