Clara Peeters. Dinner is served! is the sixth focus exhibition within the Golden Cabinet presentation. Visitors to Antwerp's Rockox House get an impression of the opulence of the 17th century town houses of the city. Top pieces from Antwerp's Royal Museum of Fine Arts, currently closed for restoration, and the most important works from the Rockox House Museum transform this former burgomaster's patrician residence into a luxurious art cabinet.
Clara Peeters was an outsider - one of the few female fine artists in the early seventeenth century, not to mention a pioneer in the development of still life as a genre. We know very little about her life. She worked in Antwerp in the first quarter of the seventeenth century, and a mere forty paintings have been attributed to her. Her still lifes - banquets, fish platters and bouquets - are a feast for the eye. But what is their deeper meaning? What was the value of Chinese porcelain to a middleclass household in 1610? What made her combine an artichoke with other delicacies and exquisite objects? Clara Peeters: Dinner is served! sets out to answer these and other questions evoked by the sometimes enigmatic work of this fascinating artist.
This exhibition is co-organised by the Royal Museum of Fine Arts Antwerp, the Rockox House and the Museo Nacional del Prado, Madrid
Practical:
Venue: Museum Rockox House, Keizerstraat 12, Antwerp
When: From 18 June 2016 to 2 October 2016
T +32 (0)3 201 92 50
www.rockoxhuis.be
The Golden Cabinet