What Does Cheese Symbolize in Dutch Still Lifes?

Still-life paintings from Dutch Golden Age artists from the 17th century likely come to mind when considering how food is featured in art. In them, cheese often takes a starring role, and we’re not talking a few dainty Edam or Gouda slices, as large wheels or wedges were often sumptuously painted. It turns out that the ubiquitous presence of cheese and how it was depicted in still lifes wasn’t only meant for decoration, but likely carried deeper meanings about life and death for the Dutch.   

 

The Dutch Golden Age

The period during the late 1500s to around 1670s was known as the Dutch Golden Age and was a time of great prosperity and stability for the Netherlands. Their maritime exploits and overseas trading ventures mainly drove their stature as a global economic power. Avid consumerism in Dutch society came along with the newly generated wealth. The new prosperous middle classes enthusiastically acquired trappings of wealth, the evidence of which they documented through commissioned paintings. This ushered in the period of realistic and often exquisitely rendered Dutch still life paintings reflecting the indulgences and symbols of this newfound prosperity. The still lifes portrayed not only people, but also elements of daily life like foods their households enjoyed as well as extravagant objects they obtained through their country’s overseas exploits. Cheese, by then a major industry produced for both domestic and export markets, was one of the few local products featured prominently in these paintings.  

 

Still Life Symbolism

Leading Dutch art historians who specialized in iconography and interpretive studies of Dutch art such as Eddy de Jongh and Josua Bruyn have explored possible meanings associated with foods from these paintings. Scholars came up with interpretations of what foods and objects stood for and frequently associated them with various states of being such as impermanence, mortality, overindulgence, and carnality. These interpretations appeared to be rooted in the values of the period’s most dominant religion at that time. The Calvinists, from a branch of Protestantism, were generally deeply religious and adhered to values like self-discipline, frugality, and humility. While they enjoyed their prosperity, there was also a strong undercurrent of introspection about their wealth and how to enjoy it responsibly. The impermanence of life and practice of temperance appeared to be among the most salient meanings behind these depictions.

The still lifes were executed in different styles, from portrayals of humble meals like bread and cheese to more ostentatious depictions of dining tables lush with seafood, cheese, fruit and nuts, and wild game. Some of the food and objects shown represented “reminders of death” or memento mori such as fruit peelings or rotting fruit, withered flowers, half-eaten food, or knocked over table implements; wild game and shellfish embodied not just decadence but also gluttony; and cheese summoned thoughts of decay and disease. 

 

Dutch Cheese Meanings

Cheese from namesake Dutch towns of Gouda, Edam, and the island Texel were often featured in the still life paintings. While not considered a luxury product, cheese was highly important to the Dutch economy, hence its presence among the more luxe food offerings was thought to be indicative of national pride. But beyond that were still other meanings. 

 

Stacked cheeses like the ones shown in Clara Peeter’s Still Life with Cheese, Almonds, and Pretzels (1615), her Still Life with Cheeses, Artichoke, and Cherries (ca. 1625) and Floris van Dijck’s Still Life with Cheese (1615) likely stood for prosperity, even luxury, due to their variety and size. Each of Peeter’s paintings shows a massive wheel of cut Gouda, with a small sheep’s (or goat’s) milk cheese atop it. The greenish brown sheep’s cheese in the foreground is purportedly from Texel, its color a result of either parsley or horseradish juice mixed in with the milk. (Note: In researching this “greenish brown” cheese, the author came across material attributing the green color to sheep poop but was unable to find a credible source to verify this information.)

 

One also sees a prominent slab of greenish brown sheep’s milk cheese atop a huge cut wheel of Gouda in Nicolaes Gillis’ Still Life with Cheese and Fruit (1611). In Pieter Claesz’s Still Life with Fruit, Gilded Tazza and Cheese Basket (1624), one of two featured cheeses flecked with either cumin seeds or cloves could have been the spiced Dutch cow’s milk cheese called Leyden that’s typically flavored with cumin or caraway seeds and was popular during the 16th-17th centuries. Cheese during that period was also associated with perishability, once again alluding to life’s impermanence. 

 

Still lifes showing butter paired with cheese, such as the plate of butter curls seen in both Peeter’s and Claesz’s paintings, symbolized affluence and were also perceived as overindulgent and extravagant. It very much aligns with a popular old Dutch saying, “Dairy product on dairy product brings the devil.” In today’s world it simply means having too much of a good thing isn’t appropriate or good for you. Stacked cheeses is another example of “dairy on dairy” and was also viewed as overindulgence.

In the essay “Dutch Cheese: A Problem of Interpretation,” Josua Bruyn argues that because cheese during that period was also treated by some with distrust, it evoked thoughts of decay, disease, and even death. He concludes that in Dutch still lifes, cheese was able to add, amidst other foods and objects symbolizing opulence and impermanence, to the “ambiguity of the fine appearances that earthly pleasures and riches had to offer.” 

It is with some relief not to have to ponder life and death when we look at cheese these days. 

 

Sources

Buvelot, Quentin. Slow Food: Dutch and Flemish Meal Still Lifes 1600-1640. Uitgeverij De Kunst, 1917.

Bruyn, Josua. “Cheese: A Problem of Interpretation.” Ten Essays for a Friend: E. de Jongh 65, Simiolus: Netherlands Quarterly for the History of Art, Vol. 24, No. 2/3, 1996,  Stichting Netherlands Kunsthistorische Publication, 2016, pp. 201-208.  

Ember, Ildiko. Delights for the Senses: Dutch and Flemish Still Life Paintings from Budapest. Szepmuveszeti Muzeum/Museum of Fine Arts, 1989.

Barnes, Donna R. and Peter G Rose. Matters of Taste: Food and Drink in Seventeenth-Century Dutch Art and Life. Syracuse University Press, 2002.