More Than Decoration

Still life is easy to underestimate. Look closer and it opens up:

• Vanitas symbols turned pretty arrangements into meditations on death
• The objects trace Dutch trade routes — tulips from Turkey, porcelain from China, spices from Indonesia
• Painters specialized so tightly that buyers knew a name by its subject

When saints left the canvas, objects took their place — and those objects told stories about mortality, money, and empire.