Calice, vidrecome, livres liturgiques et cahiers de musique

Antoine Vollon's still life depicting a chalice, vidrecome (a large drinking cup), liturgical books, and music notebooks belongs to the tradition of ecclesiastical still life — a sub-genre with roots in seventeenth-century Spanish bodegones and Dutch vanitas painting. Vollon was among the finest still-life painters of later nineteenth-century France, bringing to every subject an extraordinary facility for rendering material surfaces. Sacred vessels and liturgical texts as still-life subjects invoke the devotional function of objects while treating them with the purely optical fascination of the studio painter.

The challenge of this subject lies in the variety of material surfaces: the polished metal of the chalice, the embossed leather of liturgical books, the reflective crystal or glass of the vidrecome, the paper of the music notebooks. Vollon's brushwork varies with each material — fluid strokes for metal, drier touches for paper — demonstrating the full range of his technique.