Bartolome Perez
Madrid, 1634-1693
Still Life with Flowers in a Glass Vase, 1670s
Oil on canvas.
With its origins in Flemish painting, still life became one of the distinctive genres of seventeenth-century Spain. A pupil of the leading master of the genre, Juan de Arellano, Perez was also a capable painter of religious and historical subjects. Measure of his success, he served as official painter to the King during his last four years. Relatively heavy in pigment and broad in handling, with sharp illumination, this painting is typical of his mature production. Implicit, as in many still-life paintings of the kind, are references to the human senses.