Franz Snyders, “Still Life with Dead Game, Fruits, and Vegetables in a Market”, 1614, Oil on Canvas, Worcester Collection, Art Institute of Chicago

Snyders was one of numerous Flemish artists active in Antwerp during the early 17th century. His dramatic, nearly life-sized compositions were stimulated on occasion by a collaboration with Flander’s leading artist, Peter Paul Rubens, whose studio was also in Antwerp. Working together on large still-lifes similar to this one, Rubens painted the figures, and Snyder executed the game and produce.

By 1614, the overflowing market scene had become Snyders’s specialty. Snyders has sometimes been called the inventor of the “commercial” still life, in which the viewer becomes a customer, made evident in this painting by the vendor’s gesture of greeting. In addition to its visual appeal, the canvas provides documentation of the open sale of game in Antwerp to middle-class citizens, a result of the liberalization of laws that had previously reserved game hunting and consumption for aristocrats.