4 Vanitas: The McGuffin of Still Life

Chapters in this book

1. Frontmatter i
2. Contents ix
3. Illustrations xi
4. Acknowledgments xiii
5. Prologue 1
6. 1 Hyperreality and Truthiness 4
7. 2 Reading Blake’s “The SICK ROSE 7
8. 3 Ethics Versus Technics in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Still Life 10
9. 4 Vanitas: The McGuffin of Still Life 12
10. 5 Still Life, Trade, and Truthiness 19
11. 6 The Pretext of Occasion: Floris van Dijck’s Laid Table with Cheese and Fruit, c. 1615 24
12. 7 Nature Mourant: The Fictiveness of Dutch Realism 35
13. 8 The Embarrassment of Niches: Christoffel van den Berghe’s Vase of Flowers in a Stone Niche, 1617 39
14. 9 Nature Mourant: Bosschaert’s Leaves, Merian’s Caterpillars 46
15. 10 “Small-scale Violence” 55
16. 11 The Darker Spirit: Van Huysum’s Heaps 63
17. 12 Posies: The Bouquet as Pretext of Occasion 69
18. 13 Joris Hoefnagel and the Roots of Dutch Flower Painting 77
19. Conclusion: Allegorical Capture and Interpretive Release 90
20. Epigraph Sources 93
21. Notes 95
22. Index of Names 115