Vanitas Still-Life by Maria van Oosterwijck
Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum has recently unveiled one of its latest acquisitions: a masterpiece by one of the most important female painters of the Dutch Golden Age, Maria van Oosterwijck.
On Tuesday, March 4th, the Rijksmuseum put Vanitas Still Life by Maria van Oosterwijck on display for the first time. While the museum owns a few works connected to the artist, it currently has no paintings by Van Oosterwijck, making this the only one in the collection at the moment. The painting has been undergoing extensive restoration since the museum acquired it in 2023. Examinations of the work reveal many changes and underpaintings. For example, there was initially supposed to be an hourglass on the table and a snake slithering through a crack in a wall in the background. The initial purpose was made possible by the Women of the Rijksmuseum Fund as well as the museum Friends’ Lottery.
Maria van Oosterwijck became renowned in her own lifetime as a still-life painter specializing in floral still-life paintings. She is commonly considered not just one of the most important female painters of the era, but one of the most renowned Dutch Golden Age artists in general. She developed an impressive demand for her work among the European elite, including royalty. Some of her clients included King Louis XIV and Cosimo III de’ Medici, Grand Duke of Tuscany. Nowadays, her works are highly sought after by Old Masters collectors not only because of her renown but also because of the rarity of her works. She was known for her incredible attention to detail, so she did not create as many paintings as other comparable artists. Currently, only about thirty of her paintings are known to exist, including work owned by the Mauritshuis in The Hague, Florence’s Palatine Gallery, and the Royal Collection in London.
The work on display at the Rijksmuseum is interesting because it combines a floral still life and a vanitas painting. This genre of still life was popular in the Netherlands in the seventeenth century. Artists creating these paintings would select a series of items to be assembled together in the painting to represent themes of materialism and wealth alongside decay, time, aging, and death. Vanitas still life artists would commonly use half-eaten food, timepieces, bones, trinkets, and candles to convey these themes. Flowers were another common component, but very rarely were flowers the main focus of the painting. In the Van Oosterwijck painting at the Rijksmuseum, the bouquet is front and center, featuring roses, tulips, irises, and a sunflower. A skull lies on the table beneath it as if it is wearing a garland crown. The painting also features an orange with a bite taken out of it, a Bible, a jewelry box, and a tablet inscribed with the Ten Commandments in Hebrew. The painting is an incredibly personal since it shows Van Oosterwijck’s piety. She was a deeply religious woman, with both her father and grandfather being ministers.
According to the museum, the painting is now as close to its original state as possible. It is currently hanging in the Gallery of Honor on the Rijksmuseum’s first floor.