Still Life with Roemer

This 1644 oil on canvas by Pieter Claesz at the Detroit Institute of Arts centres on a roemer — the glass vessel that was Claesz's most consistently used and brilliantly rendered object — in a composition that demonstrates his mature command of the breakfast piece formula. The roemer, a tall footed glass with a cylindrical or slightly conical bowl decorated with raspberry-shaped glass drops (prunts) around the stem, was the standard Dutch drinking glass of the seventeenth century and appears in more Claesz still lifes than any other single object. The Detroit collection holds this work as part of a strong representation of Dutch Golden Age painting assembled in the early twentieth century, when American museums were systematically acquiring European old master works. The 1644 date, identical to the ham still life, places this among the group of works from Claesz's most productive late mature years.

Oil on canvas, with the roemer as the compositional and technical centrepiece. Glass presents the still-life painter with multiple simultaneous challenges: transparency, reflection, refraction, and the specific greenish cast of period Dutch glass. Claesz resolves these through carefully observed highlights, the faint distortion of objects seen through the glass walls, and the distinct tonality of the hollow interior.