Nature morte au médaillon de Philippe Solari (Still life with a medaillon of Solari)

Cézanne's still life incorporating a medallion portrait of his friend Philippe Solari — the sculptor — is unusual in introducing a specifically personal biographical element into the still-life format. Solari was a childhood friend from Aix-en-Provence who remained close to Cézanne throughout his life, and the inclusion of a cast of his medallion in a still-life arrangement speaks to Cézanne's practice of treating all objects as structurally equivalent — fruit, crockery, and a sculptor's portrait relief are all subject to the same analytical gaze. The work belongs to the early phase of Cézanne's mature still-life development in the 1870s.

The ceramic relief medallion is rendered with attention to its circular form and bas-relief character, distinct in handling from the rounder volumes of the fruit beside it. The tablecloth provides the characteristic creased, tilted plane that Cézanne used to introduce spatial ambiguity. Colour is built from small, directional strokes that analyse each surface independently.