Seashells in Dutch Still-Life Painting of the 17th Century

Dutch still-life is a distinctive cultural phenomenon of the 17th century. Collecting of rarities, curiosities, plants, paintings, sculptures and many other rare things was characteristic for that period. Seashells which were brought from the exotic countries attracted the attention and love of collectors and artists. J. Hoefnagel was one of the first who took an interest to seashells in the emblems. In the early Dutch flower still-life shells were found occasionally but from the beginning of the first quarter of the 17th century artists started to add these graceful creations almost into all compositions with flower bouquets and fruits. New type of still-life with seashells appeared abundantly in painting of Balthasar van der Ast, Jan Davidsz de Heеm, Abraham Beyeren, Willem Kalf and others. While the naturalism in still-life painting brought to the maximum, there was a problem of veracity in depicting shells in the engravings, for example, in Rembrandt’s work. This problem was eventually solved only in the second half of the 17th century, so engravings and zoological illustrations began to show the curl of the shells in its correct direction, exactly clockwise. This research poses problems of the appearance of shells as collectibles and Dutch still-life’ motifs, visual traditions and shells’ classification in the paintings. The article is relevant with interdisciplinary method; some mollusks zoological names with indication of their origin place are given; the cultural and historical context is generalized; the stylistic analysis takes into account the emblematics’ traditions.