These days, still-lifes often seem banal and are frequently treated as little more than decorative art, the kind of thing that the right room and right furniture needs: some fruit, some flowers. But that wasn’t always the case.
Time was, religious scenes and portraits of aristocrats were much more important and popular.
But like so much that we owe in art, the still-lifes you see at today’s art fairs, museums and galleries owe a lot to the Italian Renaissance and to the figures who dominated politics and business but also supported the arts. But you don’t have to take my word for it.
Starting Friday night, you can see for yourself at the University of Wisconsin ‘s Chazen Museum of Art, 800 University Ave., where a major new imported touring show, “Natura Morta: Still-Life Paintings and the Medici Collections, ” will be on view to the public until Oct. 21.