Still Life with Skull and Writing Quill

This painting was called Skull Life with a Skull and a Writing Quill. It was created by Pieter Claesz in the year of 1628.

This was actually one of the earliest pieces of his career in painting these stills. He was an artist that gave extraordinary presence to familiar things. In this painting there’s a big skull that you can’t miss in the middle of everything. This skull looks to be like 100 years old.It has one long slash on the top of its skull, like if someone came and slashed him with a knife or something. The front of its face looks smashed up and caved in. The brown on it makes it seem interesting.

It gives the skull a nice ageing look as if it’s been around for hundreds of years. Unlike any other skulls though this one has an overturned glass on the side of its face. Looks as if someone forced it in there. And if you look closely you can see the reflection the glass from the skull. You could also see the reflection of a window.See the frame and everything. This skull is laying on what looks like a journal.

It has to be a journal cause there’s a feather pen. Those pages on the journal look ridiculously old. There is one of those old lamps that were used back in the day. Those that lit up with fire and not electricity. Your able to see distinguish between the lights versus dark in the painting. If you squint you can see some kind of writing on the right side of the painting. Can’t really see what it says though.

I chose this painting because it seemed very interesting.I looked through a bunch of different pieces of art done by him and a lot of them have skulls in it. For some reason. And then he just adds random things in it to make the painting stand out more. This artist takes ordinary things and make them into something that you never seen before. For example the glass in the skull. I have never seen that anywhere before.

I like the way he emphasized the light vs. dark in this painting. You are able to see where the still light is and how it makes every other object in this painting pop out.I think that one of the reasons why he added the journal in there was to show that whoever that skull is suppose to be might have been a very good and bright writer. In this painting I see the life of a brilliant writer who died with his knowledge. His whole career is shown in this one little piece. One of the things that catch my eyes in artwork is creativity and this guy took whatever possible and he turned it into art.

Who would of thought that by randomly adding a feather with a skull and a glass could of made something into one of the greatest early still light paintings.