Floris van Dyck

Not much is known about Floris van Dyck’s life other than that he was born in Delft, reportedly travelled and painted in Italy and was in Rome around 1600, working as an assistant to Giuseppe Cesari, called Cavaliere d’Arpino. From at least 1603 he worked in Haarlem. His second marriage in October 1627 to the wealthy Cornelia Jansdr Vlasmans meant that from then on he probably did not have to rely on his work as a painter to provide him with an income. This may help to explain why his oeuvre is exceedingly small. Only about a dozen works by him are known. He was nevertheless highly influential as a pioneer in Haarlem of the ‘display piece’ still life showing a richly laden table with, among other things, pieces of fruit, bread and nuts placed around a stack of cheeses on a pewter plate. His compositions are always seen from an elevated viewpoint, not unlike early 17th-century landscapes, which also adopt a bird’s eye perspective.