Stillife with peacock

Still life with peacock, painted in 1636 and without a specified institutional collection in available records, places the peacock — the most visually spectacular game bird — at the center of a composition that was among the most technically demanding in the Flemish still life tradition. Peacocks had been a prestige subject in Flemish and Dutch kitchen still life since the sixteenth century, their elaborate tail feathers representing the single most complex pattern in the animal kingdom and the ultimate test of a painter's ability to render natural iridescence. Fyt painted peacocks multiple times, each time approaching the tail feathers with systematic glazing technique that built up the layered optical effect of the real feathers' microstructure. The 1636 date is relatively early in Fyt's independent career, and a peacock composition at this stage signals his ambition to master the most challenging categories of the tradition he had inherited from Snyders. Peacocks in still life also carried symbolic weight — their legendary flesh was said to be incorruptible, making them apt symbols for vanitas themes.

Peacock tail feathers are rendered through a complex sequence of glazing: a mid-tone ground, then the ochre-green of the feather's outer zone, then the dense blue-green of the eye, then a final transparent glaze that imparts the characteristic iridescence. Fyt's systematic approach to this challenge distinguishes him from painters who represented the pattern schematically rather than optically.