Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill
Pieter Claesz
€39,90
Select sizeSize guide
- 380g/m² cotton canvas — certified museum quality
- Solid wood stretcher bar with 0.75” gallery wrap
- HD Giclée print — colour-true to the original
- Ready to hang — hanging hardware included
Still Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill (1628) is one of the most poignant vanitas compositions produced during the Dutch Golden Age. Painted by Pieter Claesz, a master of the Haarlem still life tradition, this intimate oil on wood panel exemplifies the genre's quiet moral intensity. The skull, overturned glass, and writing quill are carefully arranged to remind the viewer of life's brevity — a philosophical meditation encoded in everyday objects.
Claesz renders each element with extraordinary tactile precision: the cold smoothness of bone, the translucent gleam of glass, the delicate wisp of a feather quill. His signature monochromatic palette — warm ochres, cool grays, and shadowed browns — creates a meditative stillness that draws the eye inward. The composition is spare yet deeply calculated, balancing the weight of mortality against the ephemeral act of writing.
Originally housed in the collection of The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, this masterwork now enters your space as a museum-quality stretched canvas reproduction. Printed on premium matte canvas and hand-wrapped around a solid 0.75-inch wooden frame with a clean gallery wrap finish, this piece brings the gravitas of seventeenth-century Dutch painting directly to your walls — ready to hang, built to last.
| Artist | Pieter Claesz |
| Year | 1628 |
| Medium | Oil on wood |
| Dimensions | 9 1/2 x 14 1/8 in. (24.1 x 35.9 cm) |
| Collection | The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York |
| Movement | Baroque |
| Available sizes | |
| Small | 25 × 20 cm (10″ × 8″) |
| Medium | 76 × 51 cm (30″ × 20″) |
| Large | 152 × 102 cm (60″ × 40″) |
| All sizes include a 0.75" gallery wrap. Ready to hang — no framing required. | |
