Nuts, Pleasure and Danger
This still life is a particularly early example of Claesz’s painterly skill and his ability to render surfaces and materials with such subtlety that the objects appear natural, even deceptively lifelike, in every detail, as though inviting the viewer to reach out and touch them. Yet this still life is concerned with more than beauty and splendour. The precious pocket watch and the reclining silver beaker also allude to the transience of all earthly things. As vanitas symbols, they remind us that wealth and possessions, like moments of pleasure, are subject to the passage of time. The nuts, too, can be interpreted in this context. A Latin saying sums up their ambivalent significance: Unica nux prodest, nocet altera, tertia mors est (One nut is beneficial, the second harmful, the third brings death).